A Village Hidden In Hope
by Marz1
Summary: Naruto botches his first attempt to summon and ends up in a land without Ninja. Now a bunch of monks called Jedi think he's up to no good, the only way home may require the Darkside aka the Fox, and home may no longer be there. A Naruto Starwars Xover.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does. I do not own Star Wars, George Lucas does. I don't make any money off of this story. Suing me would be pointless and mean.

**A Village Hidden in Hope**

**By Marz**

**The Prologue**

Jiraiya groaned, cursing his aching head and double vision. His face was burnt and a small sand dune was forming over his legs and torso. He wiped the grit from his face and sat up. He wiped his eyes a few more times. There were still two suns in the sky.

"What the hell?"

With another groan he got to his knees. Standing all the way upright would probably be pushing things. His head spun. What had he been drinking? After several stupefied attempts to remember he realized it was chakra exhaustion and not alcohol poisoning that was slowing his wits and dragging his body back to the ground.

"Was I trying a new technique?" he mumbled.

He was lying at the bottom of a very large sand dune and from the trail along the side of it, he had probably started at the top and come sliding to his present location. That would probably explain how all that sand had gotten down the back of his pants. All around he saw only more sand and the too yellow sky. He started back up the dune he had tumbled down.

"I was looking…I was looking for the brat-"

He stopped talking to himself and flinched a little. This wasn't the land of Sand in Wind country. True there was sand everywhere, but the air was wrong, and there was no way the Kazekage could afford a second sun, no matter how much profit he made as Leaf faltered.

He got to the top of the dune, and paused, not rising from his hands and knees. There was nothing but sand from one horizon to the other, not even a haze of mountains in the distance. He swallowed, and felt the grit in his throat.

If the brat…if Naruto had ended up here, he would not have made it. It was unlikely Jiraiya himself would survive, even with all the jutsu he knew for gathering water. From the taste of the air, there was just no moisture to be had. And with the rolling dunes in the endless sea of sand, he would probably never find the boy's body either.

"Looks like I've failed for the last time Sarutobi-sensei," he said. "I bet you're still mad."

It had taken him three years to figure out how to follow Naruto to this place. Three years since his attempt to teach the boy summoning had gone wrong. He looked up at the sky again. He still did not know where he was. He had managed to find a trail of the Kyuubi's chakra twisted up in the ravine Naruto had fallen into—been pushed into, to scare him into using the demon's power to summon a toad. He did not know where the trail led. He managed to copy the strange reverse-summon the boy had accidentally created and thrown himself after him.

Was this the underworld, some strange waterless hell? Or maybe it was the realm of the Kami. They didn't need to drink did they?

Jiraiya's mind went floating to images of the memorial stone in the village, smoke rising up around the Third Lord Hokage's name, and the name of Jiraiya's student.

"I guess you were the last one," he said to Naruto, though he knew the boy could not hear him, whatever world he was in.

He shook his head to clear it. The memorial stone vanished, and once again he looked out on the horizon, sighing. He blamed his foul mood on the lack of sake, and his immanent death under two alien suns.

He saw the shadow for only a moment, but he knew it was not a mirage. It was grainy tan against grainy tan, but he pushed more chakra into his eyes, and the details became surer.

It looked like an upside-down boat, perhaps twelve meters long and three high. He could pick out several narrow dark slits in the sloped hull, though it was too far away and too dark inside for him to see who was peering out at him. The keel pointed at the sky with a row of antenna rising from it, and a dish at the very end. The deck of the inverted craft hovered above the sand on a cushion of wavy energy. He couldn't tell if it was chakra or heat, but it displaced only the slightest cloud of dust as it rushed towards him.

The sand boat vanished behind more dunes as it got closer. He considered running or hiding, but there was no where to go, and to be honest, he did not have the strength for it. He tried to feel the chakra of those in the craft so he could at least prepare for gods, men, or demons, but nothing came to him.

The boat crested the towering dune across from the one he stood upon, and stopped. It rocked back and forth on the invisible cushion that carried it, and then sank down onto the sand. A door folded down from one side into a ramp. It was dark inside, but a rectangle of sunlight showed him the occupants as they passed near the opening. There were people in there, or at least creatures about the size of people. For a moment he glimpsed a woman with sharp teeth and tentacles on her head, and something shaped like a man, but larger and covered completely in fur. The sound of growling and hissing reached him, and mumbled sibilant words he could not even begin to understand.

And then a woman stepped out onto the ramp, and his attention was drawn to her. She seemed a normal human size and shape, though she was covered from head to toe in tan cloth. All he could see were her hands and her eyes. She waved, and then began walking down her sand dune with sure and well practiced steps. After a moment's consideration, Jiraiya did the same, though he slid and stumbled as he found his way down.

They stood across from each other in the trough between the towering dunes. This close he could see the woman was on the far side of middle age. Her hands were callused from work and the skin around her eyes was tanned and stamped with crow's feet.

"Greetings to you, ero-sennin," she said with a heavy accent.

Jiraiya fell on his face.

"Who are you?" Jiraiya asked.

The woman pulled down the cloth covering the lower part of her face. She was smiling softly, but Jiraiya probably would not have noticed if she had fangs and a beard. His eyes were glued to her cheeks, each painted with three whisker like lines.

"I am Shmi Skywalker," she said, carefully. "On behalf of our Kage, I invite you to the Village Hidden in Hope."

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**Author's Note: **This is more of a teaser chapter than a prologue, but I have a reason for putting things up in this order. There is sort of a frame story going on, but if this ends up being too confusing, I might change the format. Anyway, let me know what you think!

**P.S.** I know this should probably be slotted in crossovers instead of the plain Naruto category, but I see a lot of crossovers in this section anyway, and I think it gets more attention.


	2. Chapter 2

**A Village Hidden in Hope**

**By Marz**

**The Sand Spirits: Part I**

The heavy rumble of the sand ship's engines had been jarring at fist, but now he felt as if every bone and muscle had been shaken into insensate jelly by it, and his mind drifted, exhausted and stupefied. The harness kept him upright in his seat, so he didn't really mind.

Jiraiya had looked at the other passengers when he'd first boarded the strange craft, suspecting that at some point they'd have to drop their illusions and reveal their true forms, but they remained freakish and impossible, so he'd decided to focus on the narrow windows of the craft, watching the sea of sand blur by at a speed even the most powerful shinobi would be hard pressed to keep up.

"Where are we?" he asked the woman, Shmi, again.

"Tattooine," she said. "When we get to the village more will…we explain. I've not learned enough of your language to make things…clear."

"Is Naruto here…on Tattooine?" he asked.

"No, not now," she said carefully. "He will be back soon, but not soon enough to meet you, so he sent us."

"He knew I was coming?" Jiraiya asked.

"No. Others of the village dreamed it, especially my son," she said with obvious pride. "We knew from his dreams that you were one of Naruto's people, so we came to claim you before the desert could."

He nodded. But if she could explain all that, what words did she still need to tell him where the hell he was? Maybe she just wanted the brat to break it to him.

His eye's drifted over to another of the…women in the craft. She wasn't nearly as covered up as the rest, wearing shorts and a sort of armored bustier instead of the yards of tan cloth that Shmi favored. He decided the woman really had something going for her, though he was still on the fence about the pair of tentacles that sprouted from either side of her head and hung mostly limp across her shoulders. Every once in a while the end of one of them twitched or resettled.

shyekck ssky-skch jllik she said and leered at him.

She grinned at his confusion, showing sharply pointed teeth.

Not wanting to be rude, he leered back.

She laughed.

Jiraiya was about to ask if she knew a good place to get a drink when Shmi interrupted.

"My son found Naruto just over those waves," she said, pointing out the window.

Jiraiya obediently looked, though he couldn't begin to guess how she told one series of sand dunes from the next.

"How'd he find him way out here?"

Shmi smiled faintly. "He is usually bright orange," she said.

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**The beginning…**

The edge of the dune sea was a terrible place to test a pod-racer. The terrain was not anything like the regular course he would have to pilot through next month. There was nobody around to help if the pod broke down. There were fewer saboteurs from Mos Eisley hanging around, that was true, but that was because there were a lot more Tusken raiders in the area. There was no way he could walk back to town if something went wrong.

Not that Watto would listen.

Anakin Skywalker trotted alongside his Toydarian owner as the pod was taken off the towing rig, and set on the sand by its current owners, a pair of Bothans. Watto was considering buying it, since it was dirt cheap. It was a piece of junk. Anakin knew that before he had even opened the engine panels. Still, with a little tinkering he got the engines to light up, and with a lot of cursing and kicking by the current owners, the repulsors came online and the craft rose to minimum clearance off the ground.

"You go thirty klicks, one whole circuit. You make sure it runs, human," Watto said, waving impatiently as Anakin climbed into the pilot's seat.

"I know," Anakin said. "You said before."

The jumpy craft screamed over the sand, kicking up a cloud that came right through the cracked windshield and made it hard to breathe, much less see, but he thought he knew where he was going. The proximity monitors were functional enough to tell him when he was coming close to hitting something, and he felt like he had enough altitude. His fingers were going numb from clenching the steering columns when Watto finally signaled he could bring it back in.

He started a loop around a large dune that was just about to overbalance. His mother told him not to play around with sliding sand, but it was kind of neat to see something that big come crashing down. If he bounced the repulsors off it just right…

FOOOOOOOM!

The left engine coughed out a huge cloud of grit, but the dune started tipping. He was looking at the sliding pile with pride, noticing belatedly that there were footprints going up the dune, and maybe something orange now sliding along the backside of it.

"Oh, crud," he muttered as the dune rolled over and settled out.

He circled the pile again, hoping it was just some old bit of cloth a Jawa had abandoned. His engines blew loose sand away, and he peered through the clouds of dust.

It was definitely something orange.

Something orange with a hand sticking out of it.

"Oh crud crud crud."

He circled again, but the engines wouldn't blow any more sand away, not without getting low enough to risk crashing or chopping up the person he'd buried. He picked up the com.

"Watto, I need to shut down," he said, hoping it didn't sound like a lie, not that the Toydarian was good at deciphering human tones.

"Why, human?" he said through a burst of static. "On the monitor it looks fine."

"The manifold is cracking," Anakin said into the radio. "I've got to shut down for a half hour or it'll blow out and you'll have to tow it back."

There was muttered cursing.

"Fine. Shut down. You guard that pod with your life, human."

"Yes, Sir."

Anakin looked for a good place to land, but there was nothing for a hundred yards in any direction. The orange…thing was in loose sand, but if he tried to park there, the ship would be buried in a second. He whined to himself and backtracked. The engines shut down with an unpleasant cough that made him wonder if they would start up again. He looked out at the sand. Whoever it was had been under for almost three minutes, now. Maybe they were already dead. Maybe there was no reason to go out there.

But his mother would be mad if he did not at least try to help.

Anakin set his goggles on the seat and climbed over the side. His feet sank into the sand and he started walking so he would not disappear beneath it. The orange thing hadn't moved. He hurried now, feeling exposed on all sides. He could see the hand better now. It was definitely human, and not much larger than his own.

A shadow was passing along the inside of his head.

The entire desert got dark. He could still see the suns, but it was like an unholy haze had settled over everything. He had never been more afraid in his life. As he stepped closer to the still form, he felt sure the sky was about to crack open, or the sand would rise up and swallow him.

"Mom will be mad if I don't help," he said out loud, trying to ward off whatever it was.

_Though how would she ever know…_

He gritted his teeth and grabbed the hand and then the wrist. There was a pulse. He pulled and a body came loose from the sand. The feeling of dread lessened, but didn't leave.

It was a human, a boy, not much older than he was, or at least not that much larger. He was heavy, though. As Anakin pulled him up, sand poured out of the boy's orange jumpsuit. The boy's face was burned and blistered from the sun. His eyes were swollen and crusted shut and his mouth and nose were gummy with blood. Anakin rolled him over, face up, and the boy took a shallow raspy breath.

Anakin opened his canteen and pried the other's mouth open, dribbling a little water in. The boy swallowed. A little at a time, the boy took in the whole bottle, but he never really woke up. Anakin went through his pockets, since he could not object. The boy had knives and wire and sharp metal stars, but no I.D.

"Don't suppose you could wake up now?" Anakin asked.

The boy was silent and limp as Anakin started to drag him to the pod-racer.

If he told Watto, the boy might be taken to the hospital and treated, but if he was, then he would just be sold into slavery to pay the cost of his care, and it was more likely the Toydarian would consider the injured human too far gone, and make Anakin leave him behind.

But what Watto did not know…

The pilot's compartment was too small to hide the injured boy in. He went back to the engine. It would be a tight, uncomfortable ride…

It took him twenty minutes to stuff the other boy inside the right engine casing. Watto was shouting into the radio the whole time. It took another twenty minutes to sabotage the engine on that side so it wouldn't start up and fry the orange boy. When the racer finally limped back to the tow rig, listing heavily to one side, everyone was mad. One of the Bothans grabbed him by the hair and pulled him out of the pilot's seat the moment he unbuckled the safety harness.

"Your slave broke it!" the one holding his hair growled.

"I did not! You patched it with low quality lead solder and it melted in the heat," Anakin whined, doing his best to appear both honest and pathetic.

"Lies!" growled the other.

"Then what kind of solder did you use?" Anakin shrieked.

"You damage my slave, you pay for a new one," Watto warned.

That was about as far as the Toydarian would go for him, but the shaking stopped. The large furry alien didn't let go of him, though. Anakin noticed the other one was starting to pick around at the occupied engine. He had to do something soon. Watto hadn't owned Anakin and his mother for much more than a year, but Anakin had picked up a bit of his owner's native language.

"You should buy it sir," Anakin said. "The patch is bad but the rest is not that broken."

"What's he saying?" the Bothan holding his hair demanded.

"He says it's not his fault. He said the craft is garbage," Watto said in basic.

This comment earned Anakin more shaking.

"You can fix it?" Watto asked in his own language.

"Yes sir!" he said.

"He says it's not worth more than a scrap fee," Watto said. "I suppose I could generously offer you 1500 credits for it."

"As scrap alone it's worth 11,000!" the one by the engine said.

"But it isn't even disassembled," Watto said. "It would take weeks of work to get the useful pieces out."

"The engines still work," the one holding Anakin's hair added. "We wouldn't take less than 20,000."

With another half hour of bargaining, they finally settled on a price of 18,500 credits, which was about as much as it would cost to buy Anakin himself. The boy had an angry feeling in his stomach as he watched his owner transfer half the money, the rest to be transferred when the pod was dropped off at the junkyard.

The ride back was long and hot, and Anakin knew the inside of the engine panel was probably twice as hot as the cab he was riding in. With bad grace, the Bothans unloaded it from the tow rig and drove off.

"Can you really fix it, human?" Watto asked when the cloud of dust had settled.

"Yes sir," Anakin said. "The other engine isn't really broken. I just kinked up the power flows so they'd sell it cheaper," he added.

Watto looked at him for a long moment, and for a second Anakin thought he was mad. But then the Toydarian nodded. "You're not as dumb as you look, human. But don't start to think you're smarter than me."

"Yes sir," he said.

"You can go home early today, slave," Watto said.

"Sir, I'd rather start working on the pod now," Anakin said. "The Eisley open is only a month away."

Watto gave him another long look. "You're up to something, I think. But alright."

"Sir? Can I call my mother back here to help? I can't lift some of the pieces by myself."

Watto waved a dismissive hand. "Alright, human. But if you think you can double cross me, I'll sell you back to a Hutt. You remember that, and don't get greedy."

"Yes sir."

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The call was unexpected, so of course she panicked. She ran all the way to the city, kicking up sand and probably losing a whole day's water ration in sweat. When Shmi got to Watto's shop, everything looked normal. She paused to catch her breath.

"What's wrong, human?" Watto asked, startling a yelp out of her.

"Nothing, sir," she said. "I thought something was wrong…to be called back this late."

The small blue creature mumbled something about foolish females in his own language. Shmi supposed she was probably better off not understanding him completely. She didn't have the gift for languages her son did.

"Your offspring needs help lifting things. He is too small," Watto said, as if this were her fault.

"Yes sir," she said, and hurried out into the junkyard.

She gulped as she saw the craft her son was working on. It was a pod-racer. And Anakin wasn't taking it apart. She hoped desperately that he needed help taking it apart, that Watto didn't expect her eight-year-old son to fly it. Hoping never really worked out for her.

"Hi, mom!" Anakin called, waving to her as he crawled out of under one of the engines.

"Are you alright?" she asked, rushing over.

"Yeah, sure," he said, fidgeting as she pulled him upright, checked him for injuries and then hugged him.

"Does he want you to fly that thing?" she asked.

Anakin nodded. "I flew it today, but it broke down. It needs a lot of work, but I can get it going."

"Can't it stay broken?" she asked as quietly as she could.

"Is Watto out here?" Anakin whispered.

"He's inside, still, I think."

"Come look," Anakin said.

She followed him around to the far side of the craft, where an engine panel had been pried loose. Anakin peered one last time around the pod, and not seeing their owner, he pulled the panel open.

There was a corpse inside. She pressed her hand to her mouth.

"He needs help," Anakin said, somewhat proudly.

She always taught him to help those in need, but couldn't he see-?

The corpse twitched.

"I couldn't carry him home on my own," Anakin said. "Watto hasn't seen him."

She nodded, reaching in to check the not-quite-dead boy's pulse. There was almost no movement in his veins, the blood cooked down to sludge. His sun-exposed skin was crusted with blisters from second degree burns, but even those had dried out. He wasn't going to make it.

She wanted to tell Anakin this, to tell him no effort of theirs would help him. But Anakin looked up at her, and she knew what she had to say. She had to make him believe that they were more than just property, that there was greater judgment than that of those who owned them.

"You did a good thing," she said. "We will try to help."

Anakin smiled.

It wasn't much effort to convince Watto to let them work late and clean up after themselves. The Toydarian did not worry about them stealing from him. He kept an inventory and he could search their home if he ever felt like it. Long after the sun had set, Shmi pulled the dying boy out of the engine compartment, wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him home. Anakin trotted along beside her, apparently pleased with himself. It would be all that much harder when the orange boy died.

But he didn't.

She undressed him, put antibiotic salve and bandages on the worst of the sunburns, and put him in her bed. She settled in a chair next to him. She tried to stay awake, but she'd worked all day, and kept nodding off. Every time she woke up to check on the boy, she expected to find him dead, and every time she was surprised to find him breathing and thirsty. The boy went through their monthly water ration and she knew she'd be forced to borrow from the neighbors.

At dawn she and Anakin had to go to work. She left a pouch of water on the chair next to the bed, though she didn't think the boy would have the strength to reach for it. They spent the day working on the machine she was sure would get her son killed. When they got home the boy was still alive, and the pouch of water empty, crumpled in the boy's fist.

After another night of drinking, the strange boy's flesh had the look of flesh again, instead of dried paper. She went to change the bandages and found the sun-blisters gone. She noticed the scars on the boy's cheeks, but they looked to be ritual decorations, rather than injuries. Someone had tattooed whiskers on him. She couldn't recall a people that did that, but she hadn't seen much of the universe, and knew she never would.

Near dawn on the second day, the boy began to mutter strange words, and a few times he opened his eyes, but if he knew where he was or what was happening, he gave no sign. It was three more nights before he woke entirely.

Shimi had left the boy alone, and gone to use the fresher, and when she came back, he was out of bed and looking around the room, and apparently doing some sort of dance.

"Here!" she said, pointing at the fresher.

He darted into the room, and spent almost a quarter of an hour disposing of excess liquid. Shmi didn't think a normal human could hold that much, but she was rather glad he hadn't let it go in her bed. Of course, a normal human wouldn't have recovered from cooking to death in the desert. She supposed he was just a similar-looking species.

The fresher had gone quiet. She knocked on the thin panel door, and the boy slid it open. He laughed nervously and scratched at the back of his head, mumbling something in that incomprehensible language. She tried to talk to him in basic, but he didn't know it. Eventually with some pointing and miming she figured out that he didn't know how to cycle the fresher, or where to get sanitizer for his hands.

When that was dealt with, she showed the boy where she'd left his clothes and he scrambled back into them, checking all the pouches and pockets for weapons that she thought he probably shouldn't have. The boy froze for a moment and looked past Shmi, and she saw Anakin peeking in the door. The orange boy waved at him and smiled, and Anakin wandered in.

"Who are you?" Anakin asked.

The boy just looked at him.

"He doesn't know basic," Shmi said. "Do you think you could get him talking? Perhaps we could figure out where he's from by the language he speaks."

"I'll try, mom," Anakin said.

He was unfortunately successful with the first part of his task, but an hour of babbling hadn't given them an idea of the boy's origin. At least they had figured out names…sort of.

The orange boy was named Uzumaki Naruto, and he had learned Anakin's name, but he addressed Shmi as "Shmi-mama-sama" and didn't seem to understand that her name was Shmi and her son Anakin was the only one meant to call her "mom". It wasn't until much later that they realized he understood the word "mom" and was doing it on purpose, and later still when Naruto learned Anakin didn't want to share.

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**The Present… **

Jiraiya had expected it to look like the Village hidden in Sand, and he supposed the outer wall was similar enough, sand compressed and bonded together into huge protective walls. There was a large rectangular gap in the wall and they headed into it. Where he thought a gate should be hanging, they passed through unimpeded. They turned sharply once through, and the ship followed a narrow road along the inside of the wall. Jiraiya twisted in his seat, as this maneuver had put the buildings of the village behind his back.

The village was much larger than the Village hidden in Sand, and much more tacky. There were hundreds of buildings, most painted some shade of neon green, orange, or pink, though he saw a few bright yellows and reds. They passed a green building that was probably Maito Gai's dream retirement home. It actually made Jiraiya's eyelids twitch.

"What…what's with the paint job?" he asked Shmi.

"We are living in a harsh place," she said. "This world will eventually bleach us all to white bones. I suppose many here wish to stand out while they can."

Jiraiya supposed that made some sort of sense, if you were a crazy art student.

"Alright, I guess," he said. "How come nothing's blue?"

"That's the color of water. It would be too tempting to fate."

"Ok. Whatever."

A large warehouse appeared around a turn, and Jiraiya assumed that was their destination. He had to press down on a jolted stomach as the sand ship dropped into darkness, entering a tunnel he hadn't seen from the street, though he couldn't figure out how he'd missed a hole big enough to drop a 12-meter-long craft into.

They weren't in the tunnel long; it opened into a large underground parking area, where dozens of other…ships sat waiting. Many of them looked more like bizarre sculpture than mobile craft, ranging from sharp, needle-like towers with tiny wings on the side, to squat circles with tiny legs on the bottom to keep them off the ground.

The sand ship turned and backed neatly into a parking space in the shadow of a craft that looked like a two-story-tall tea cup with four large fans half unfolded and glued to the side. The sand ship sank to the ground and the engines cut out with a sigh. The others started unbuckling their harnesses and Jiraiya did the same. He realized his hands were shaking. He got up and took a step. The floor tilted, but no one else reacted to it. A very large, fur-covered hand caught his elbow to steady him.

"You would…perhaps like to rest," Shmi said. "We will give you a…tour later?"

"Yeah, that'd be alright," Jiraiya said, suddenly feeling worn out. He didn't even have the energy to chat up the tentacle woman as she walked off the ship.

The large furry creature kept a grip on his elbow, escorting Shmi and him through the ship parking area into a tiny white room. He was about to ask what they were expected to do in there when the doors slid shut with a hiss, and the room moved upward. He wobbled again. The furry creature made a concerned whining noise. Jiraiya wanted to shake himself free of its grip. It was making him feel old and short, but he knew he'd fall over if he did. The elevator stopped moving and they walked out at street level.

"Do you feel well enough to walk a few hundred yards, or should we call up a transport?" Shmi asked.

"I'll make it," he said stubbornly. "Where are we going?"

"My home," she said. "With my sons out so much, there are plenty of free beds."

"I don't mean to impose…" he said.

"Those in need are always welcome in the Skywalker home," she said.

"I'll bet," he grumbled half-heartedly.

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**Author's note**: Hope that wasn't too overdone. This chapter got super-crazy-too-long so I chopped it in half. I know this first part is a little slow. Butt kicking will begin in the next chapter! Also, if I make a major canon error, feel free to point it out, but if I'm off a decimal point on a hyper-drive specification, I don't need to know. Also I'm checking my story facts against the Star Wars online encyclopedia, because I haven't read or bought all the novels, comic books, Christmas specials etc…and if I spent all my time doing that, I'd never be able to write this. Don't forget to review!


	3. Chapter 3

**A Village Hidden in Hope**

**By Marz**

**The Sand Spirits: Part II**

Jiraiya woke unsure of where he was, and not really caring. The air was dry and there was a faint mechanical hum in the background. He rolled over in the too-soft bed and finally sat up, struggling to find the floor and then the bathroom. Trying to figure out how to flush the strange, waterless toilet finally brought his mind back to the present. He was in the desert land, looking for Naruto.

After failing to understand the sink, shower and other items that may or may not be meant for washing, he gave up and wandered out into the hall. His legs weren't shaking as they had been when the… Wookie had helped him find his way to his room the first time around. He had regenerated some chakra, probably because he'd been asleep for at least a day, but he wasn't anywhere near ready for a big battle. That jutsu had taken every last bit of his strength and then some.

He could hear people in the kitchen. It wasn't far from his room. The subterranean house was smaller than he'd expected, especially for someone who seemed to have as much pull in the village as Shmi Skywalker did. He took his time making his way along, stopping to look at the pictures hanging there. Most of them were video playing or still on small, paper-thin television screens, but a few were on real paper. He stopped to peer at a childish scribble; three stick-figure people--a woman and two blond boys. He realized one of the boys was Naruto, though the orange crayon used wasn't quite the same as the boy's real jumpsuit. That figure also had bold whiskers on its off-centered circle of a face.

Looking closer, Jiraiya saw the picture had been labeled in his own language.

_ Me, Shmi-mama-sama, Anakin_

Damn, that kid could **_not _**draw.

He rubbed at his face and sighed. He focused his chakra into his ears and listened to the talking in the kitchen again. He identified Shmi and a stranger, and both of them talking in another language, though he did hear them mention Naruto, Anakin, and Kage.

What had they called the kid? Their Kage? Jiraiya doubted they knew what the word meant, or that Naruto had bothered to explain it to them. He was glad the kid hadn't ended up somewhere horrible, but he shouldn't have been granting himself titles he hadn't earned. He let his feet drag a bit so they'd hear him coming.

There was an old man sitting at the table with Shmi. He had snow-white hair and deep lines around his mouth, but his gaze was steady and his eyes were clear. Other than old, Jiraiya couldn't guess at his age. He wore what looked like an armored vest over his tan robes, and there was some sort of machine attached to the side of his head.

"Morning," Jiraiya said hoarsely.

"This is Contras Avora; he's one of our most experienced military advisers," Shmi said.

"Ero-sennin," the man said, nodding respectfully.

Jiraiya frowned. "Did the brat ever explain to you what that meant?"

They nodded. Jiraiya's face fell.

"Hungry?" Shmi asked.

He nodded and a moment later had been served a bowl with a lid and a cup with a lid. He supposed it was to keep the contents from evaporating before he could ingest them. He opened the bowl and stirred the tan substance within.

"It's a protein / carbohydrate base ration," Avora said with barely a hint of an accent. "The med-droid did a scan yesterday when you didn't wake up. It recommended a boring diet until you've had a chance to settle in with the local microbes."

"Does everyone here speak my language?" Jiraiya asked, trying a spoonful of the bland mush. "And what's a med-droid?"

"We learned your language from Naruto," she said. "Well, not all of us learned it directly from him, but my other son Anakin set up a language program so a droid could record as much of it as possible and make a sort of primer for us to work from. It's actually a very good language for sending coded messages with."

"Oh, right," Jiraiya said.

"And a med-droid is a big, creepy robot that poked you with needles while you were passed out," Avora said.

"Oh, right. No, wait, what?" Jiraiya asked. "What's a robot?"

They started explaining and it sounded like something that was halfway between a computer and a puppet that didn't need a puppeteers' chakra to move. It didn't make much sense to him, but he decided it was easier to nod. And then Avora had to go do something with "telemetry" and left them alone. Jiraiya finished his mush and looked from his mug of tea to his hostess.

"So…is the brat doing alright?" he asked. "It took me longer than it should have to figure out how to follow him."

"Naruto is doing well," Shmi said. "Though I'd hardly call him…a brat. He's an adult by most standards."

Jiraiya was really baffled about how they judged such things here. Would Naruto be able to handle all the bad news Jiraiya had for him? He doubted it. Maybe he should just leave the kid here if he was so well off. He'd be safe from the Akatsuki and the Village hadn't exactly encouraged Jiraiya's efforts to retrieve the demon prison.

To kill some time, he asked Shmi about the Village Hidden in Hope, and she did her best to paint a picture for him. The village was one of the largest cities on the planet, and had become the capitol after a war with the planet's former rulers, the Hutts. The other cities, including their closest neighbor, Mos Espa, were still troubled by crime and the justice system wasn't much better than mob rule, but it was a great deal better then the previous system of Hutt rule.

Jiraiya wasn't terribly surprised. Fringe places tended to be run toward survival of the fittest. Shmi explained that most of the sentient beings who lived on Tattooine were prospectors or former slaves. And even after they lost political control, many of the Hutts stayed because of business investments. There was also a primitive race called, surprisingly enough, 'the sand people', living out in the open desert. It was a very harsh place, but many were trying to change it for the better.

Though Jiraiya did not know a lot about this world and had only the barest understanding of how he and the brat had come to be there, he was sure it could have been worse. Naruto had a lot of luck to end up in a place like this. Jiraiya made the mistake of telling Shmi so.

"It was our luck, not his," Shmi said.

"I just mean he's lucky you found him and brought him to your village," Jiraiya said.

"I don't think you understand at all," Shmi said. "Why do you think we wear his marks?" she said, pointing at the whisker lines drawn on her face. "He saved us. He saved all of us."

"Yeah, sure," Jiraiya said. "I just meant I'm glad he ended up in this village and not…you know, one of the other ones you described."

"He did not 'end up' in this village," Shmi said. "With his help, we built it."

Jiraiya couldn't think of anything to say in reply. He waited for more of the story.

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**The First Days…**

Naruto knew he was pretty much the opposite of a genius, but even he had figured out instantly that he wasn't at the bottom of the ravine in Konoha. He remembered falling, and the dark sewer that held the Fox. He remembered the monster's chakra flowing up over him, and then a panicked scramble to form all the seals before he hit the ground and died. He thought he might've done one wrong, but the blood from his nicked finger splashed out, and the chakra drained into the seals, and there was a lot of smoke….

He sat up and winced away from the sun. There had been a feeling of being pulled. And he remembered seeing bright things blur past through a long dark space…and then this. He figured he'd sent himself away rather than summoning a toad. And since he came to while lying on a sand dune, and there was no ocean in sight, he figured he was in Wind Country.

He hoped he wasn't near that Gaara kid's village, Hidden Sand. If that kid was a Genin, he never wanted to come across a Jonin, especially since he didn't have permission to be wherever it was he had landed. Sure, Sand Village was allied with Leaf, but he didn't know how friendly they'd be.

"Maybe if I do the same thing, but backwards, I'll send myself home!" he said, nodding to himself as his whole body prickled with sweat.

He bit his thumb and tried to make the seals in the reverse order. Nothing happened. He couldn't focus his chakra at all. He realized there was nothing to draw on. He frowned. He'd exhausted himself before, but even then he could feel something. Now there was nothing.

"I'll walk for a while, and try again. I don't want to be right where I started, anyway. I'd just be falling in that ravine again," he said.

Nothing in the endless desert answered him.

Though exhausted, he walked until it was dark. There was some weird optical illusion; he saw the sun set twice. Or maybe it was genjutsu. He had the horrifying thought that he'd just been walking in a circle all day, getting more and more thirsty, trapped in an illusion, like he, Sakura, Kabuto, and Sasuke were during that last part of the second test. Maybe that was how Sand village defended itself. Maybe if you weren't invited you just walked in circled until you died of thirst.

He fell asleep as soon as he lay down. He woke up to the sound of flapping feathers.

There was a strange-looking bird a few yards away, watching him. There was something very wrong with its face. It looked like it was halfway between a bug and a bird, with bulging milky eyes and a circular, fanged, cavity of a mouth instead of a beak.

"Go away!" he shouted, horrified.

It made a sort of hissing sound and took off. He didn't see another living thing for the rest of the day. When he sat down to rest again he passed out, and woke in the dark. He tried to look at the stars, to figure out if he was going in the right direction, but he couldn't find even one familiar constellation. He wished again that he'd paid attention in the basic survival classes.

He walked some more.

He wished he still had his goggles. His eyes stung from three days of glaring light. They prickled and he tried not to cry, because he wasn't sure if it would be from frustration or physical injury. He didn't plan to give up. He wasn't going to just lie down and die, but every step got harder and his legs ached, and his breath rasped in and out past his parched lips.

He tried to summon a few times, but nothing happened. He tried to make the Fox talk to him again, but he couldn't find his way back to that sewer. He wished desperately he was back in that dank tunnel, so he could drink the water puddled on the floor.

He thought he heard the word _Fool_ echoing in the distance somewhere, but he decided it was just his mind playing tricks. The tricks got worse after that.

Consciousness took on a strobe-like quality. He would blink and find himself stumbling across the sand. He'd blink again and he'd be in Konoha walking down empty streets. The fountains were empty and none of the taps worked. He tried to drink from a garden hose and it bit him on the face. He blinked himself back to the desert. It was dark, but he got up and shuffled along anyway. Light came and went, he moved when he could, and lay staring when he couldn't.

"I'm not going to die here," he rasped to himself. "I'll get home. I don't need to be rescued. I'll get up…in just one minute…"

Naruto woke up to someone smoothing his hair back from his forehead and pressing a cup of water to his lips. The water tasted murky and metallic, but he drank it anyway. He tried to open his eyes but they were swollen shut. A voice murmured in his ear. It was a woman's, but her words didn't make any sense. He groaned--at least, he tried to groan, but all that came out was a sort of strangled huff. He was given more water and slept again.

It went on like that for he didn't know how long, coming half-awake and drinking until he felt his stomach would burst, all the while some woman speaking quiet nonsense in the background.

When he finally woke all the way, he really had to pee.

The lady who showed him how the bathroom worked was really nice, but she looked really tired. Naruto realized, after being shown the entirety of the small house, that he had been sleeping in her bed. He'd tried to apologize, but she hadn't understood. He hadn't heard that they spoke another language in the Village Hidden in the Sand, but it seemed to be true. She didn't even know where the Kazekage's office was, or where the diplomatic station thing was. Iruka-sensei had told him he had to check into one if he ever went to another village officially.

The lady's kid came in; the little boy was probably about the same age as Konohamaru. Naruto was pretty sure the little brat didn't like him much, though he was polite in front of his mother. They spent an hour talking, but got nowhere. Well, Naruto, Anakin, and Shmi-mama-sama exchanged names, but Naruto still had no idea where the diplomatic station was.

Eventually he decided to look for it on his own. They both tried to stop him from leaving. The woman made pleading gestures, and the little boy kept calling him a word that Naruto was pretty sure meant "idiot". But they'd get in just as much trouble as him if they were caught harboring a missing, or in Naruto's case a lost nin. They called after him as he walked away from their house and followed him out to a road that lead to a larger city Naruto could just see sticking out of sand dunes beyond. He set off through the desert with an unhappy trudge.

He walked through the gates of the village, which hung open and were guarded by men in armor who didn't seem to care that Naruto was walking in past them. They didn't give his Leaf headband a second look. Of course, he didn't spot a Sand symbol on any of the guards, either. He thought for a moment that it was some other city in Wind country, until he finally saw the ninja.

The Village Hidden in the Sand had the freakiest bunch of blood limits Naruto had ever seen. There were people who looked like lizards, people with too many arms, people covered in fur. He started to wonder if maybe they weren't summoned creatures instead of people. He even saw several groups using wind jutsu to float wheel-less wagons along through the streets.

He wandered through the village, looking for ninja headbands, but nobody wore them. He didn't even see any ninja insignia, which was feeding a growing suspicion that this wasn't the Village Hidden in the Sand, despite the sand everywhere.

After a couple of hours repeating "Kazekage", "shinobi", "Konoha" and a dozen other words he though should inspire directions, he was no closer to finding his way home, and his mouth was completely dry. He spent another half hour looking around for a well or a drinking fountain, but there was nothing. He went so far as to enter a bar, where he was given a lot of creepy looks. He saw people getting cups of water at the counter, in exchange for large piles of triangular coins. He frowned and went back outside, slapping away a hand as a large man tried to grab him.

He went out and found an alley to slump in. A weird, rat-like creature ran by his feet.

He didn't have any money for water. He didn't have any money for anything. A shadow fell over him. It was the man from the bar. He had some weird thing in his hand. It looked kind of like Sakura's blow drier. He pointed it at Naruto and tried to grab him again.

Naruto swept the man's legs out of under him and hopped to his feet.

"Leave me alone, you jerk!" he demanded.

The man pointed the blow drier at him. Naruto wasn't really afraid of it, but dodged out of its path on general principle. He was glad he did. A red light came out of the blow drier and burned a hole in the wall. Naruto dashed around out of the line of fire and kicked the weapon out of the man's hand, and then kicked him in the face for good measure. The man went limp. Still scowling, Naruto went through the man's pockets, but there weren't any of those little coins.

"I guess you were going to rob me, but the joke's on you, jerk," he declared.

He kept the blow-drier-fire-shooting-thing and went wandering again. As he walked away, he saw a couple of short people in brown, hooded robes running out to rob the man he'd knocked out. The small robed people made strange bubbling sounds at each other as they fought over the downed man's shirt and boots.

It was so stupid. In Leaf there were rivers and fountains and wells, but here blood seemed cheaper than water. Naruto considered robbing someone else, but he didn't really understand how the money around here worked.

He climbed up on a roof and watched the street vendors sell what looked like dried-out frogs, small bottles of liquid that were definitely not water, and more of those strange, fire-shooting blow-driers. Some people were exchanging the little triangle coins, but then others would give a crystal-looking thing to a merchant and then get it back. Others would press their thumb to a glowing board. If he was going to mug someone, he didn't know if he'd be taking coins or buttons or what off of them, and he really didn't want to take a thumb.

Feeling defeated, he trudged back out to the huts outside the village.

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The strange boy came back to them at the end of the day. Shmi was relieved, but worried all over again. Apparently Naruto hadn't found any of his people to feed and house him. Somehow he'd acquired a blaster, though. He chattered for awhile and then made motions like he was drinking from a cup.

She was glad she could keep an eye on him, as he didn't seem to realize what a harsh world he was on. Of course, he had been to Mos Espa and come back alive, unharmed, and still free of controller implants, so he must have some survival instincts.

She managed to trade the blaster for enough credits to replace all the water the boy drank, but it wasn't going to be enough for more than a week of upkeep. She hoped Anakin would be able to find the boy's people before that ran out. But one week ran out, and then two, and Anakin still couldn't find any trace of Konoha in any of the databases he hacked.

Shmi tried to keep Naruto inside and quiet, but always failed. She was worried for his safety as much as she was about being held responsible for his conduct. His understanding of Basic was less than rudimentary, and he only understood the word "no" when it was yelled at him. She knew Naruto's presence was taking a toll on her son. He was sullen and came close to snapping at Watto's customers. She tried to ask him what was wrong, but he would just growl "nothing" and slink off to his pile of scrapped droids.

She thought he was jealous of the other boy but that was only a very small part of it.

Anakin was not fond of their house guest. His mother had tried to get them to share a bed, since he was too old to share with her, and they only had two. But Naruto kicked in his sleep, and not just a little. Anakin just dragged two chairs together and stole the best blanket after his mother had tucked them in.

He wanted to tell his mother that he didn't want to share a room at all, that Naruto's presence gave him strange nightmares about a huge red-eyed thing in a cage, but he couldn't figure how to say it without sounding like a stupid baby. He used to think there were monsters in the closet, but all he ever found in there were rats.

More than anything, he wanted Naruto gone.

**-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-**

More than anything else, Naruto wanted to **_be_**gone. Time crawled by, and nobody had come looking for him. He wasn't sure how long he had been in the desert village, but he'd been living with the Skywalkers for at least a month. The third Exam was long over.

Naruto almost wanted to cry over that. He'd lost his chance to show up that Neji jerk, and he wouldn't get to fight Sasuke and impress Sakura. And old man Hokage would never acknowledge his awesomeness. Naruto hopped the old pervert who'd been teaching him to summon had explained that he had gotten lost doing a jutsu. If he just vanished, people would think he'd chickened out. He had enough problems with people thinking he was dead last. He didn't need them to think he was a coward, too; a coward wasn't worth looking for.

He kept up with his training, wandering into the desert away from prying eyes to throw kunai and practice his chakra control and jutsu. Summoning still wasn't working, but he could still make clones and do all the academy basics. That day he stayed out until the first sunset, and then wandered back to the Skywalkers' hut.

He frowned and looked up at the sky again. It was still cloudless. Shmi and Anakin were always showing him maps, trying to figure out where he was from, but their maps didn't make any sense. Their maps showed no hint of the elemental countries. It didn't even show the ocean. He tried to explain, but they just looked confused as they struggled to find common words. They seemed to know what an ocean was, but they insisted there wasn't one.

He didn't believe them at fist, even when they showed him pictures of the planet from space. He knew you couldn't just go into space. But he saw those ships take off from Mos Espa and go up into the sky until they disappeared. He wanted to go up into the sky in a ship, certain he'd be able to spot his homeland from that vantage point, but the Skywalkers didn't have one, and he certainly didn't have enough money to get one. He couldn't even steal one, because he had no idea how to make it work.

He hadn't felt this crushed since Mizuki told him about the demon. And that had only been bad for a few minutes, because Iruka-sensei had shouted right back that he believed Naruto was human and worthy. But now there was nobody. He could hear the Skywalkers inside as he approached, and suddenly he couldn't face them. He channeled some chakra into his feet and climbed onto the roof. He spent the night looking at stars that weren't in the right place.

**-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-**

Shmi went to wake up the boys and found Anakin alone in the bed. She shook him gently.

"Did Naruto get up already?" she asked.

"I don't think he came back last night," Anakin said.

She couldn't fail to notice the pleased hint in her son's voice, but didn't reprimand him for not telling her. Instead, she started looking. She sent Anakin to search the junk heap at the end of the street where the local children sometimes played, while she looked around their small house and the alleys around it. She found no trace of him, but as she came back, she saw the lost boy sitting on the roof. Against her better judgment she crawled up to join him.

He was watching the suns rise with the saddest look she'd ever seen on a humanoid face, and having spent most of her life among despairing slaves, that was saying something. When he saw her struggling up the wall, he held out a hand and when she took it he pulled her up with impossible strength. Again she wondered what kind of humanoid he was.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"There are two," he said, looking down.

"Two what?"

"I think…might be wrong…might be seeing wrong…but there are two…"

Naruto waved at the sky as the first sun crawled above the horizon.

"Two suns," she said.

"There's only one…this place…this place is too far…I don't know where is my home…"

She put an arm around him, and he started so badly he almost fell off the roof. When he realized what she was doing, he leaned against her, shaking a little but not crying.

"Our home is your home as long as you need it," she said.

Then he did cry.

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Anakin was not having a good morning. His mother had been in a panic looking for Naruto, and when she found him, the older boy wasn't even hurt. He was just being an idiot and hiding on the roof. And the time they wasted looking for Naruto meant Anakin didn't get a chance to finish the circuit he'd been working on before he had to leave for work. He left the house in a bad mood, and it didn't get any better when he noticed the whiskered boy was following him.

"Why you all the time go before Mama-sama?" Naruto asked in broken basic.

"I start before her. Watto has me start inventory and programming as soon as the shop opens. **_My_**mother goes to clean his house and run errands for him before she comes to the shop. She can start later since Watto doesn't know how long the errands really take."

"Why work for…Watto? That blue guy is jerk."

"I don't have a choice," Anakin said.

"You quit," Naruto said.

"I can't quit, you idiot. I'm a slave!"

"Slave?" the older boy said slowly, as if slowing down the word would make it easier to comprehend.

"It means we do what he says or we die. He owns us."

The older boy's eyes narrowed. Apparently he understood.

"I kill him," Naruto said, taking out one of those strange triangular knives he kept in a pouch on his hip. "You not owned."

"No!" Anakin shouted. He didn't really think the orange nuisance could do it, but if he even tried it, Anakin knew he'd get them all in trouble. He tried to explain it. "If he dies, whoever gets his stuff gets us. We'll be sold again, maybe to different people. Maybe I'll lose my mom. If you try anything, I'll kill you!"

"Why not try?" the orange boy asked. "You like be slave?"

Anakin couldn't help it. He forgot everything his mother taught him about being polite. He kicked the other boy with all his might. His boot struck Naruto's shin. The other boy hopped back and rubbed at the injury, looking a bit annoyed. Anakin didn't really notice. Pain was shooting through his foot. He tried to balance on just the one and fell over. His eyes were tearing up. Naruto stepped towards him and Anakin lashed out with his good foot.

"Just go away! Just go back into the desert and disappear again!" Anakin shouted.

"You want to…run away from Watto?" Naruto asked, still not getting it.

"We can't run!" Anakin shouted. "If we run away, we die! Do you understand that, you idiot? Die! Do you remember what that means? So it's this or it's nothing!"

"How you die?"

"We explode. Boom! You get it? We explode and there is blood all over and we die!" Anakin said, remembering another slave he'd seen.

It was one of the earliest things he remembered. The man was big and strong and he couldn't stand to be ordered around. His owner had told him to do something. Anakin couldn't recall what, but the big man had refused. He'd crossed his arms and said 'no'. A minute later he was dead, with blood leaking out his nose and eyes and ears.

"Just go away!" he said to Naruto. "You aren't like us, and you aren't helping. You just make it all worse!"

Anakin got to his feet and tried to walk, but every step felt like he was bringing his foot down on needles. Hopping along on his good foot would take forever. He was going to be late for sure. Anakin thought he might've broken his toes. Watto was going to be mad. He was going to be late and get in trouble and Watto would punish him, maybe cut his ration and they were barely making it anyway…

He was shaken out of his doomed thoughts as Naruto picked him up and swung him around onto his own back. He let go and Anakin wrapped his arms around his neck to keep from sliding off. He hadn't had a piggyback ride in a while. It was years ago when he realized he was hurting his mother's back. The older boy took off at a dead run toward Mos Espa.

"You kick all wrong," Naruto said. "Mama-sama not teach you fight?"

"Fighting just gets a slave in trouble," Anakin said.

"But good trouble, yes?"

Anakin didn't know what to say to that. He wanted to punch Naruto and struggle along on his own, but he didn't want to get in trouble. There was no good trouble.

They got to the city in a quarter of the time it would have taken Anakin to run there, and Naruto didn't look the least bit tired from the mad dash. They blurred past guards and shop owners, but the streets were still mostly empty. Anakin looked down at his transport. Naruto could run without getting tired and had shins made out of steel. Maybe he was some kind of droid.

Anakin had never seen Naruto come into the shop, but he apparently knew where it was. He was a little surprised to realize Naruto had never come to bother them there. Maybe he understood he'd get them in trouble, even if he didn't understand the stakes. The shop was still dark and closed. Watto hadn't even arrived to open the security gate yet. Naruto set the smaller boy down in front of the shop, and then dropped to the ground next to him.

"How long you slave?" Naruto asked, picking up handfuls of sand and dropping them again.

Anakin pulled off his boot and rubbed at his injured toes. He considered ignoring the older boy, but he'd probably just keep asking. A lot of his anger had worn off by then, anyway.

"Since I was born. Mom used to be free, but that was a long time ago. She's from another world, but she doesn't talk about it much. I'll never see it, so I guess it's not worth thinking about."

"You talk like you give up," Naruto said.

"Give up what?" Anakin asked. "I was born with nothing but this. There isn't a way to change it. Fate picks who wins and who loses."

Anakin didn't really believe he was going to be a slave all his life. But those dark thoughts were always in his mind. He figured that if Naruto thought he wasn't going to do anything, he wouldn't try, either. He was very wrong.

"You call me idiot," Naruto said, letting his head sink down until his chin touched his chest. "Fate…that word…I always hear…from idiots."

Naruto looked up then, and Anakin thought his eyes looked red. Not bloodshot. Anakin's heart felt frozen in his chest. The irises had changed, though maybe it was just the dawn light. They looked like the eyes in Anakin's nightmare. He blinked until the other's eyes looked blue again. Naruto's glare remained fixed even after his eyes returned to normal.

"Idiots say Fate this…Fate that…there is only Fate if you don't fight. You maybe don't fight for you…but for Shmi-mama-sama you fight…for later…for…for…"

Naruto trailed off, looking confused. Anakin supposed he had exhausted his vocabulary. They sat for another twenty minutes in silence.

"You should go before Watto gets here," Anakin finally said.

"I will stay and help," Naruto said.

"You don't know anything about droids or engines. How can you help?" Anakin challenged.

He shrugged. "I will…help. Help is _D-rank_."

Anakin, of course, had no idea what that meant, but he knew Naruto didn't know a grounding portal from his own butt. He thought about kicking him again, but then he saw Watto fluttering up the street like an unhappy bug.

"Who's this?" Watto asked. "I think maybe I've seen him around before."

"He's my mother's sister's son," Anakin said, rushing to come up with a good lie. "He's from a free part of the family. They sent him to find us, but his money got snatched. The ship he bought passage out on got impounded by a corporation creditor, and the bankrupt captain won't give him his money back-"

"I didn't ask you for his life story, human," Watto said. "What's he doing here if he has no money?"

"I hurt my foot," Anakin said. "He came to help me out."

"What are you giving him to help you?" the Toydarian asked.

"Nothing, sir," Anakin said.

"Then why's he doing it? You aren't going to help him steal from my store, are you, slave?"

"No, sir."

"Then why?"

"He's family."

"Family works for free?" the Toydarian asked, snorting. "I need family like that. I wouldn't need slaves. Nothing better be missing at the end of the day, human."

"Yes, sir."

Naruto was scowling, but Watto either didn't notice or didn't care. He unlocked the security gate and the servos raised it. The older boy helped Anakin to his feet and lent him an arm as he hopped inside. Watto pointed out the pile of fuel pumps that he'd bought from the Jawas, and muttered something about inventory, before fluttering to his office. Naruto helped Anakin find a seat by the pile and fetched the data pad and cleaning tools Anakin pointed at.

While the Toydarian was in the other room, Anakin sliced into his computer system. He found the file he wanted, and waved Naruto over. The older boy peered at the controller displayed on the screen. He tried to keep his explanation simple.

"They put these things inside us. If we try to get away, they set it off. It explodes and kills you."

Naruto had a hand pressed to his own stomach.

"Thing inside you," he said. "How it get there?"

"With a really big needle," Anakin said, bringing up a picture of the needle on the monitor.

Naruto's face looked more than a little green.

"How you get it out?" Naruto asked.

"Same way, but you have to turn it off first," Anakin said. "Otherwise…boom."

"How you turn off?" Naruto asked.

"With a master controller and the right codes," Anakin said.

"Where they keep them?" Naruto asked, looking into a bin of junk as if they might be hidden among the fuel pumps.

"It's not something you can just snatch. It's code and tech," Anakin said, turning his data pad and showing Naruto the characters scrolling across it.

He nodded in satisfaction as the other boy's face clouded in confusion. The confusion left his face a moment later, replaced with a defiant stare.

"Then you tell me about code," Naruto said. "I will learn to steal it."

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**The Present…**

"Wait," Jiraiya said. "Naruto broke some kind of computer cipher?"

"No," Shmi said. "He can just barely operate the com system even when it's turned on for him. He has many talents, but he isn't a slicer."

Jiraiya had no idea what a slicer was, but nodded like he did. He had a suspicion she saw through it.

"So how did he end up freeing you?" he asked.

"I am getting to that," she said. "What's the rush? Do you have somewhere else to be this morning?"

Jiraiya thought about mentioning the woman with the tentacles who'd been on the flying ship with them. Then he sighed. "Not unless the brat came back," he said finally.

She shook her head.

"Then please continue."


	4. Chapter 4

**A Village Hidden in Hope**

**By Marz**

**The Sand Spirit : Part III**

That day, he used Sasuke's face when he stole. Naruto picked out a few things based on the pictures on the labels. He could speak Basic a little better now, but he couldn't read it yet. Anakin would sort his haul when he got home, anyway. He saw a package of something that looked like noodles and gave it a long moment of consideration.

The last time he thought he was snatching noodles, he actually picked up a package of dormant gut-worms that were apparently some sort of Hutt delicacy. Of course, he didn't realize that until he left them soaking in hot water and they woke up. They made a break for it, and they weren't content to hide in a dark corner. They wanted a new gut.

Naruto hadn't noticed them until he felt a sharp pinch between his toes and saw the worm starting to slide under the skin. He yanked it back out and turned just in time to see the bowl tip itself over and spill hundreds of attack-noodles onto the table and floor. And of course the Skywalkers chose that exact moment to walk in the front door. Needless to say, the surprise dinner he had been making for Shmi and Anakin had been surprising. Shmi had been mad about the gouges in the floor, but Naruto was certain that shuriken were called for.

Naruto decided to risk it. He missed Ramen almost as much as he missed Sakura. A package of hopefully noodles vanished from the shelf. Fairly often, the shopkeepers didn't even notice him slipping things into his pockets, though once in a while their droids did. Naruto was better at stealth than most shinobi would give him credit for, and these people were no shinobi. Usually they didn't notice him at all except to yell "move along if you aren't going to buy" when he stayed put in a shop for too long.

There were a couple of shops that put tracking chips on the bottoms of the items they displayed, which Naruto hadn't even thought to check for until the security guard from one store followed him all the way across Mos Espa. Naruto had gotten away, of course. Most of the people here had no chance of catching him unless they were in a "speeder" anyway. Still, he couldn't let them follow him back to the Skywalker's house. They usually didn't bother to chip food, though.

When his pockets were full, he wandered out into the streets, found an empty alley, and released his disguise spell.

"Bye, Sasuke," he muttered as the smoke vanished.

The streets were a little more crowded than usual, with the pod race coming up. Naruto managed to snatch a few bracelets and wallets on his way back out of town. He trotted through the desert, humming to himself as he crossed the dunes under the sweltering sun. He usually didn't take the same path the slaves took. He didn't care if people thought he was a slave, but didn't want a lot of people to know where he lived. Once in a while a bandit would follow him out of the city. He'd acquired three more blasters that way.

He walked back into the Skywalker's house and was a bit surprised to see Anakin was home early. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his head down.

"You sick?" Naruto asked.

"No. Watto gave me the rest of the day off," Anakin said, sounding pissy.

"Why he do that?" Naruto asked.

Anakin rolled his eyes. "The pod race is coming up. Registration was today and he doesn't want the other pilots to see me at his shop."

"Why?" Naruto said. "You not that ugly."

"Cause if they recognize me, they might try to kill me, stupid! There's a lot of money riding on this race!" the younger boy said.

"I go with you, you point out the other pilots to _me_," Naruto suggested.

"No, that would just get us in trouble," Anakin said.

Naruto shrugged and started unloading his take on the table.

"Stealing is wrong," Anakin said. "And you aren't anyone important. If you're caught, they'll kill you, and maybe us for letting you stay here."

Naruto hadn't shown the Skywalkers everything he was capable of. He'd finally caught on that there were no other shinobi in the area. He made sure no one was around when he was training with jutsu. He didn't think the Skywalkers would turn on him, but he had figured out that standing out would do more harm than good. When the rescue party from Konoha came, it would be a different story. He was sure he could convince them to help get the bombs out of his new friends. Even if nobody back home liked him much, it was impossible not to like Shmi. She was just like a mom. He supposed Anakin was alright too, even if he could be as bratty as Konohamaru at times.

"I'm not caught," Naruto said. "I know. I don't wear my face to then either, right?"

"It's still wrong," Anakin insisted.

"You and Shmi-mama-sama are stolen. That's more wrong."

Anakin could not think of anything to say to that. He stuck his tongue out at Naruto when the other boy had turned around. Naruto still saw him do it, of course. He managed to ignore it.

It had taken Naruto a while to figure things out. At first he though Anakin was a jerk, picking on him because he knew Naruto didn't understand their land and knew he couldn't get by without Anakin and his mother showing him the ropes.

It wasn't until Anakin accused his mother of liking Naruto better that he finally understood the younger boy was jealous of him. That was kind of new. No one was ever jealous of the dead last, but Naruto understood things from Anakin's side, at least.

Anakin was a slave, treated worse than Naruto was in Leaf for being the demon's prison. And Anakin couldn't try to become a ninja and fight his way to the top. He couldn't do anything unless his owner let him. Even if Anakin won the race that was coming up, he wouldn't get to keep the prize. Watto might give him a few extra days off or some other little reward, but that wasn't any fair compensation for risking his life.

"_Ramen?"_ Naruto asked, picking up the package of hopefully noodles and thrusting them in Anakin's face.

"If _Ramen_ means worms, then yes," Anakin said, scowling. "At least they're freeze-dried this time."

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Naruto had improved things for the Skywalkers. He more than replaced the food and water he had eaten while recovering. Shmi tried to speak to Naruto about the obvious thefts, but every time he would lapse into his own language. Shmi for the first time in her life had excess. While the protein and carb reductions could be saved, Naruto had begun to bring home fresh food, as well, and that she decided should be shared before it spoiled.

Of course, when things start to improve for the poor and downtrodden, some terrible calamity usually shows up to put things right again.

The slave neighborhoods were often the scene of crime. Aside from the normal quarrels that degenerated to violence, slavers would raid from time to time using overrides on implanted controllers to steal slaves to sell elsewhere. But most often the slaves were the victims of local gangs. Though they were impoverished, there was no one protecting them. It was illegal for slaves to be armed (unless they were tasked with guarding by their masters). A few carried blasters, anyway, but they weren't organized or brave enough to repel the gangs of free criminals. Security forces from the city would sometimes come out if owners paid them to check up on their property, but for the most part, they were on their own.

There was something of a neighborhood watch, but it was voluntary, and most of the people living there were too tired from the daily labors to put much effort into standing guard. Most often, screaming from those living on the edge of the neighborhood let everyone else know trouble was coming. Shmi and Anakin usually just hid when they heard gangs or slavers were coming, but that night there was no warning except a queasy feeling in Anakin's stomach. He got up to ask his mother for medicine, when they heard shouting right outside the house. Shmi shoved Anakin back in his room and locked him in.

They knocked in the front door a moment later.

"Hellooooooooo!" said the first one, marching in like he owned the place. He reached out and flicked on the lights, and looked around, shaking his head in disappointment.

"Anything good?" called another from outside.

"Naw, just some dry old bitch," the first one said.

Shmi raised her hands to show she was no threat. "Please leave us be. We have nothing worth stealing and we have to work early in the morning."

Their leader just laughed as two more of them crowded inside. They were all human and they wore an assortment of knives and blasters. They hadn't bothered to wear masks, though.

"What's in there?" the first one asked, pointing at Anakin's room with his blaster.

"My children," Shmi said. "My sons," she amended.

"Well let's have a look, hu?" the first one said.

"Please, it's late. They're sleeping," she pleaded.

They ignored her and their leader stomped forward and kicked in the flimsy door. He stopped short. Shmi couldn't see what he was looking at from where she was standing, but she did not like the happy grin that spread across the gangster's face.

"Mama, you didn't tell me we had guests!" a feminine voice called.

Shmi's mouth dropped open as a naked blonde woman walked confidently out of Anakin's room, seemingly immune to the men's leers.

"Oh! And they're cute!" the woman declared in slightly accented Basic.

"One of your sons?" one of them asked, half-laughing at Shmi's confusion.

"Let's go out," the woman purred. "We'll have fun," she added, turning toward Shmi and giving her a wink.

Shmi saw then that the woman had 3 lines on each cheek, and realized that somehow, this was Naruto. She tried to grab his…her arm, to force a warning out of her mouth, but the man with the rifle pushed Shmi to the ground. He was about to club her with the stock when the girl caught his elbow.

"Hey, don't push mama around," she said, leaning back and stretching up her arms. "She does good work, yes?"

The man seemed to forget Shmi was even there.

"Let's go out," the woman said again. "We don't want wake up the baby, right? We might get loud."

The gang members, practically drooling now, followed her out into the night.

It took Shmi a moment to get her head together. She heard a pained whine from outside. She couldn't just let this happen. She grabbed the hydro spanner from under the sink and crept to the door. She heard a masculine grunt from around the side of the house, and crept towards it with the spanner held above her head. She turned the corner and froze. The spanner dropped to the ground with a dull clank.

Naruto was a boy again, in his pajamas. All three gang members lay prone on the ground. Naruto was bending over one of them pulling at something at the back of the man's head. Shmi realized he was trying to free a knife that was jammed up to the hilt in his skull. It came free suddenly and blood spurted up across the boy's face. He wiped it away, and started going through the dead man's pockets.

"It's ok Shmi-mama-sama," he said without looking up. "Go back inside. I got them."

She took step closer. The other two men's throats were slit. She gasped.

"No worry," Naruto said. "Go hide. I'll fix. Anakin, you go too."

Shmi whirled, not even realizing her son was behind her. Anakin was staring at the blood, now clumping in the sand.

"Are they dead?" he asked.

Naruto made a sort of frustrated hiss. "Yes, bad, now dead." He said as he rolled another body over to check the back pockets. He waved Anakin over and the boy came on shaky legs. Naruto put the man's blasters and power packs in his arms. Then he handed over knives, credit chips, belts, drugs, and finally boots. When the corpses were stripped of all but their least valuable clothes, Naruto walked Anakin and Shmi back inside, giving them little pushes whenever they tried to look back. Shmi wanted to talk to him about what happened, but a scream from two houses down froze them all.

"You hide," Naruto said. "I'll fix, clean this up. You hide?"

"We'll hide," Shmi said.

Naruto nodded, and in blood-spattered pajamas ran back into the night.

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_I just killed three people._

Naruto supposed he would have been more hesitant if it hadn't been so easy. His training had kicked in, and with a few quick motions they were dead. He wasn't really sad about it. He had a crawling feeling in his stomach, but his heart was pounding fit to burst, and that kept more of his attention. He knew a shinobi should be calm in a battle. They had to be cold and logical. He tried to think coldly and an image of Haku drifted into his mind.

_…protect those who are precious to you…_

Those words worked a lot better than half-remembered lessons from the academy. He'd worry about it later.

He slipped up the side of another hut and listened for a moment as something was smashed and somebody begged. He sped through the seal and three clones appeared on the roof with him. One henged into the first gang member he had killed, and dropped down by the hut's door.

"Hey! Come check this out!" the disguised clone called into the hut.

Naruto wanted to mention some really valuable but heavy thing that the other gang members would have to help him carry, but he just didn't know enough words, yet. It didn't seem to matter. Armed men rushed out of the hut, and Naruto's clones fell on them.

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Three days later, Mos Espa security found 28 members of the Sand King gang stripped and buried in a shallow pit just outside the Bantha stables. The gang hadn't been that large or influential, and others rapidly moved into their territory, but word got around that they met their end in the slave quarters, and few risked hunting there again.

For a week after the incident, Naruto rarely spoke. Once when Anakin returned from work they walked out into the desert and practiced firing the blasters. Out of 45 Naruto had acquired, they kept 6. The rest went out to the other slaves, in trade or handed out because they didn't know what else to do with them. Though only a few had seen Naruto "cleaning up" that night, rumor got around that he had taken out the gang.

Several other gangs came around to recruit, but they either couldn't find him, or couldn't make their offers understood. Since the kid seemed to have no ambition outside the slave quarters, they let it go.

Shmi tried to talk to Naruto about what happened. He'd obviously killed to protect them, but the fact that he'd done it so well and so easily left her tense and unable to sleep. She decided confrontation was inevitable and when Anakin was out on another practice run in Watto's pod racer, she sat Naruto down at the table with a cup of tea for each of them, determined to be understood.

"Please, Naruto," she said. "I need to know what's going on. I need to know how you did that."

"I am shinobi, a killer, to protect my precious people…I am lost and no one is looking for me. I am trained to fight and kill and vanish…but before this I haven't…only training…"

Shmi thought she understood. It was obvious the boy had come from some low-tech world or tribe. They had coms and lights but were planet-bound. Despite many explanations, Naruto still didn't seem to entirely understand that he was on one of many inhabitable planets in the galaxy. He was trained as a mercenary or assassin and had no family and was apparently despised for it. It frightened her that killing was so much a part of him, but he couldn't help how he was raised, and was a good boy in spite of that.

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**The Present…**

Jiraiya looked up from the strange tea. "You mean he took out two dozen bandits in one night?"

She nodded.

"Guess that sexy girl jutsu is more useful than I thought."

"What other uses could it possibly have?" Shmi asked archly.

"None," Jiraiya said quickly. "Absolutely none."

Shmi stirred her tea for a moment before putting the lid back on her cup.

"Is your world truly so violent that even the children must kill like that?" she asked.

"Yours isn't so different," he pointed out.

"I get the impression that he has more peace here than he ever did at home," she said. "I can't imagine a place worse than this, though I'll admit I haven't seen many worlds in my life."

Jiraiya frowned. It wasn't really a nod, more of a slump, but she took it as a yes. "Our villages are constantly at war. Not all children learn the ninja arts. Few are suitable for that life, but Naruto was very suitable…"

"He's such a kind soul, I don't see how that could be," she said.

"Trust me on this, ma'am. He was born for it."

"Do you mean to take him back?" she asked.

"I…I don't know. I swore to the Third Lord I'd find him. But his home…it's changed since he's been gone."

"I got the impression he was not well-liked there," Shmi said.

"The marks on his face," Jiraiya said. "They aren't a good thing."

She nodded. "He was rather disturbed when we started wearing them. He said they meant he had a poisoned spirit in him. But if that means he is an outcast, then we are cast out with him. He is family to us."

Jiraiya nodded. There was no way the kid was going to want to come back to Leaf now. "So he eventually stole enough to buy your freedom?"

"No," Shmi said. "But I will get to that part of the story, soon."

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Anakin's stomach was tying itself in knots as he walked through the marketplace. Watto had given him another half day off so he could prepare for the race. The pod was in as good a condition as he could make it, using recycled bits of junk from Watto's yard. The engines still threatened to overheat and blow out, but since his owner wasn't willing to pay for a new coolant system, he was stuck pumping nitrogen through tubes that were more tape and instant-patch than actual tube.

The race was 19 hours away, and Anakin had never been more tempted to make a run for it. If he lost the race, Watto would be out a lot of money, and he would be really mad. If Anakin won, somebody might make Watto a worthwhile offer, and buy him away from his mother. Anakin wanted to fly the pod-racer, but he wanted to hop in and head for open desert, not the track.

He felt something coming at him and brought up his hands. The blow struck his arms and he was thrown to the ground, but not really injured. He scrambled back to his feet, looking at the strange being that had attacked him. It was a Dug. They were short bipeds, that walked on what humans would consider their arms, while their legs hung folded up under them, unless they were busy kicking around small humans, apparently. Anakin had met a few of them while working for Watto. They weren't very friendly, but he had picked up a little of their language. All he really knew were the curse words.

"What was that for, you vent-scraping pood eater?" Anakin demanded.

The Dug snorted, and jabbered something at him. It took Anakin a moment to figure out his meaning. Apparently his name was Sebulba, and he wanted Anakin to drop out of the race. Anakin recognized the name. Sebulba had won dozens of races throughout the galaxy. He was as well known for his racing skills as he was for his cheating.

"Not going to happen," Anakin said in Basic.

There was another lightning-fast barrage of words. Something about Anakin not being healthy enough to race. He understood the threat only half an instant before Sebulba's foot was flying at his face again. Anakin flinched and brought up his hands, but nothing hit him. He risked opening his eyes.

Naruto was standing there holding the Dug pilot by the back of his neck.

"This the one you talk about?" Naruto asked. "Other pilot?"

Anakin nodded.

"You thinking you hurting my little brother?" Naruto asked the Dug.

Sebulba spat out a rude comment. Anakin translated.

"He said because I'm a slave it doesn't matter," Anakin said. "He says you should put him down before you get yourself in trouble."

"Does he know I'm not slave?" Naruto asked, through gritted teeth.

The Dug spat out another mysterious phrase.

"He said all humans are slaves out here," Anakin said.

"Does he think I'm that much human?" Naruto asked.

The Dug twisted and kicked Naruto in the chest, and the orange-clad boy lost his grip on the Dug's neck, but he caught the offending legs before Sebulba could pull them back. Naruto twisted and flung him up in the air. Sebulba squawked and flailed for something to grab onto, but nothing broke his fall and he landed with a thud half a block away.

"You sure you pilot? You don't fly very well!" Naruto called after him.

Sebulba eventually got to his feet, limping badly. Anakin knew it was wrong to be happy that someone else was in pain. If his mother knew how hard he had to fight to keep a grin off his face, she'd be ashamed of him.

Naruto stuck with Anakin the rest of the day, following him on every errand and lurking in a menacing fashion around Watto's junkyard while Anakin worked on the pod. The toydarian didn't seem too happy to have Naruto there glaring at his customers, but he didn't try to make him leave. It was almost closing time when Watto got a message from one of his contacts at the race register. He came fluttering out to the pod.

"The odds on us have gone down for you, human," Watto said.

"Why?" Anakin asked.

"I got a call from someone I know, who knows things," Watto said. "He says somebody is planning to break up my pod-racer tonight. Says they sliced the register and got my location. I want you to take the pod to your lot. You bring it into the city tomorrow, right before the start of the race, so they won't have a chance to sabotage it."

"But I don't have a garage, and there's no way it'll fit in our house," Anakin said.

"Then you park it outside and you watch it," his owner said. "Have your cousin watch it for you. I don't care. Just get it out of here."

Anakin argued a bit more, but it did no good. He climbed into the pilot's seat and fired up the engines. They smoked more than they should have, but all of the systems were at least nominally functional. Naruto opened the gate around the yard so he could pull out, and Anakin idled in the street for a moment. Quite a few people stopped to stare at the electricity arcing between the engines. Anakin looked around for Naruto, but he wasn't standing by the gate, anymore. Someone tapped him on top of the head.

He almost hit the throttle, but pulled back his hand in time to avoid an accident. Naruto was standing on the back of the pilot's seat, grinning down at him.

"You better get off before you fall off," Anakin said.

"I won't fall," Naruto said.

"Yes you will."

"Won't, I have tree-walking skill," the other boy said.

Anakin glared. "Fine," he said, and hit the throttle.

To his amazed annoyance, Naruto didn't fall, and spent the whole ride laughing and cheering, and occasionally coughing as they sped out of the city and through clouds of grit toward the slave quarters.

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Anakin checked the charge pack again. It was still full. The blaster was heavier than he thought it would be.

"Do you really think someone will come out here?" he asked Naruto in a low voice.

"It wouldn't be that hard," the older boy said.

Shmi was not happy about the pod-racer parked out in front of their hut. Everyone else in the neighborhood had already wandered by to stare at it. The local children had climbed on it and pitched a fit when Anakin wouldn't give them a ride in it. A few other slave children who Anakin considered his friends, Wald and Kitster, had helped to chase them away. They went home when it got dark, though, and he was left alone outside with Naruto. Shmi had wanted to sit out there with them, but Naruto had convinced her to wait inside. He tried to get Anakin to wait inside, too, but Anakin didn't trust him not to pull wires out or kick loose an important circuit while he was playing around.

So far things had been pretty quiet, but they still had 8 hours until dawn.

There was a hooting shriek somewhere out in the dunes, and Anakin jumped. The Sand people usually didn't enter the slave quarters. They seemed to know there wasn't anyone worth killing out there, though every once in a while someone was shot with a gafi stick on their way into Mos Espa to work. The shriek was answered by another that seemed even closer.

"How far away are they, do you think?" Anakin whispered.

"One maybe three hundred yards that way," Naruto said, pointing. "Not the one yelling, though. That one is farther out."

Naruto was always wandering out into the desert, but as far as Anakin and Shmi knew, the Sand people had never given the boy trouble, or at least not trouble he felt like mentioning. Still, he'd never brought home a gafi stick the way he did blasters.

"Should we go say hi?" Naruto asked, grinning.

His teeth seemed to glow in the dark.

"No," Anakin said, realizing he was being teased.

"They not come," Naruto said. "You can go sleep. I can watch."

"It's my pod, I'll watch it," he said.

"You tiny, weak little civilian. You go sleep," Naruto teased.

"I can stay awake as long as you, you big jerk!" Anakin replied.

Twenty minutes later he was out like a light, slumped against his fake cousin's side.

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He was standing up to his ankles in water. It was foul water, but he was still amazed. Anakin just wasn't used to seeing that much water in one place. He probably would have spent a long time contemplating it, had the thing not rattled the bars of its cage.

Anakin stumbled back and fell to the ground. The back of his clothes soaked through. Two huge red eyes stared down at him.

"**_How'd you get in here?"_** The creature asked.

Anakin saw all its teeth as it spoke. Every one of them was larger than he was.

"I…I don't know," he said, getting up.

"**_I suppose it doesn't really matter. Come here, boy. I need you to do me a little favor."_**

"What kind of favor?" Anakin asked.

"**_You see that bit of paper on the bars over there?" _**It asked, sticking a claw between the bars to point. **_"I just need you to pull that off."_**

It didn't seem like much of anything. No one even used paper anymore, really. Why did it even matter? But Anakin knew deep down that taking that bit of paper down was a bad idea.

"Why?" Anakin asked, looking up at the paper.

**_"Don't ask stupid questions!" _**It roared. **_"Do it, or I'll burn your soul right out of your scrawny body."_**

Anakin took another step back. He realized there was door behind him.

**_"Get back here worm, and take it down!"_**

"If you're so great, you do it!" Anakin shouted.

He turned and ran, nearly wetting himself as the thing began to howl.

Anakin woke with a start, accidentally squeezing the trigger on his blaster and shooting Naruto in the leg. The other boy shrieked and hopped around. The blaster was set on stun, so it only numbed the older boy's leg instead of blowing it off. Still, his shouts brought Shmi running.

She took Anakin's gun away from him, and started a lecture which didn't stop until the suns came up. His nightmare had mostly faded from his memory, but his hands still shook as he started up the pod-racer and headed into the city. He didn't feel much better as he did his systems checks and lined up for the race. His morning did not improve after that.

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**The Present…**

Jiraiya shifted. "So he didn't win his first race?"

"No, he came in second place," she said. "But for his first race, that impressed a lot of people. Watto also had a few bets that were contingent on Anakin simply finishing the race, which was not likely," Shmi said. "He won the next one, though. It was shortly after that, that Naruto decided he also needed a job."

"Doing what?" the Sannin couldn't help but ask.

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"I guess you could become a bounty hunter," Anakin said, "But around here, most of them work for the Hutts, and they don't get paid that much. And they usually just hunt down slaves, or debtors to make them slaves."

"Yeah, that won't work," Naruto agreed.

"There's the fighting pits," Anakin said. "But mom wouldn't like that at all."

"Fighting pits?"

"Blood sports," Anakin said. "Usually the Hutts fund that, too. Two fighters go into the pit, and one kills the other. I think they might have fights against animals, too, maybe that wouldn't be so bad."

"Do you know where this…happens?" Naruto asked.

"Not really, but Watto will. He bets on everything. He might even set it up for a cut."

It took Anakin a few days to arrange things with his boss. The Toydarian knew Anakin's "cousin" could fight, but he didn't have specifics, and there weren't a lot of options for Naruto that didn't involve hurting another sentient being. Finally Watto showed up with a few forms to fill out and a place and time. Anakin didn't like the look of it.

Apparently there was some sort of tournament at the m'Nak arena. The prize money was pretty good, though. It was a little too good in Anakin's opinion. He read the forms again. It seemed that Watto would get money either way, and Naruto would only get something if he won. Anakin pointed out how odd that was.

"He's not famous, human," Watto said. "This is best I can do."

Naruto shrugged. "They have my money at the end. That's all I care about."

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"Step on the scanner," the droid instructed.

Naruto obeyed, the hairs on his neck standing up as a light ran over him. The readout crossed the screen and men in the betting cages laughed.

**_Species: Human _**

**_Mass: 52 Kilograms_**

**_Age: 13 standard years_**

**_Augments: None_**

**_Weapons: Ceremonial knives, wire, throwing stars_**

**_Training: Unknown / Shinobi_**

**_Win: 1: 7200_**

**_Fight Ranking: Slaughter_**

Naruto scowled at that. He walked to the other side of the room and slouched against the wall as his opponents were brought in. They couldn't take them out of their cages for the weigh-in and scans, so one unlucky bastard had to walk around them with a sensor on a stick, nearly losing his head twice.

The creatures (in separate cages because they'd attack each other, too) looked rather like a cross between a gorilla and a hyena, and kept all the legs from both. They growled and drooled and hurled crap as their stats were taken. The info on the first creature rolled across the screen.

**_Species: Gra'natksh_**

**_Mass: 300 Kilograms_**

**_Age: Adult / 6 standard years_**

**_Augments: Chemically induced berserker state_**

**_Weapons: none_**

**_Training: 38 previous pit fight kills_**

**_Win: 7200: 1_**

**_Fight Ranking: Slaughter_**

"Scared, kid?" asked the beast's owner with a smirk. "Never had nobody volunteer to fight these things. Mostly they just toss them screaming into the pit and watch the spray."

Naruto looked at the man, fat and smirking with blue skin. He shrugged, though he really wanted to shout about how he'd be the best and kick all those monsters' asses. He held back, though. Anakin had put a bet on him winning, and apparently if everyone thought you were going to lose, the bet would get more money when he didn't.

"Really, kid, what makes you think you've got a shot?"

Naruto frowned, thinking about the second task of the chunin exam, the giant snakes he'd fought.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage of Leaf, and it'll take more than six butt-ugly dogs to beat me!"

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The six creatures darted into the pit, the lead animal coming straight at him. Naruto focused his chakra into his legs and leapt. As the creature passed below him, he flung a handful of shuriken. The creature howled and blood spurted around the metal stars, but it seemed more angry than hurt. Naruto looked away, focusing on landing without being savaged by two trailing creatures.

He wished then that Kakashi had taught him some kind of fire jutsu like Sasuke had, since most animals were afraid of fire. But all he had was the little one from Iruka's survival training for starting campfires, and even that one he wasn't good at.

Naruto ducked under one of the creature's swiping arms and twisted around its head as it snapped at him. He slashed its left eye with a kunai and then leapt up over it as it turned to bite him. Another creature lunged at him from behind, just missing, its clawed hands slashing into the side of the one he'd half blinded. Naruto ducked and rolled across the filthy sand as the injured one sank its jaws into the throat of its attacker.

_That's two out of the fight for now_, he thought.

He pulled the steel wire from his pouch as he leapt onto the back of another creature that was charging him, gluing his feet to it with chakra as it bucked and twisted, trying to grab him. He flipped a loop of wire around its neck and jerked it tight, but then it started to roll over and he leapt free…

…And was swatted down by the one with the shuriken stuck in it. He rolled away from its claws and the two others, who'd just been circling, darted in. He managed to avoid the lunging head of one, but it landed on top of him He couldn't see what was going on, but the air was being crushed out of him and his right leg must not have been under the creature because something sank its claws into him. He didn't scream, mostly because he couldn't, and tried to pull his injured leg under his smothering shelter. Another creature landed on the one that was already on him and they were all pushed further down into the sand.

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Iltra Gib wondered when they were going to call the fight. He was rather annoyed that the small human had cost him two of his six Gra'natksh, and if he didn't call them off and sedate them soon, they'd probably turn on the one with the metal spikes jabbed in it. He wondered if this had ever happened before, a Gra'natksh pack crushing their prey before they tore it to shreds. He was about to demand the match judge call it, when the dirt beneath one of the beasts exploded upward and the boy lunged out of the arena sand, burying two blades in the Gra'natksh's belly and then pulling in opposite directions.

The cuts were lethal, but the angles were unfortunate. The Gra'natksh's guts spilled over the boy, leaving him blind and slipping as the rest of the pack left off savaging each other to inspect the sudden new source of blood.

They were on top of the entangled boy in an instant and there was a splash of redder blood. Gib was once again going to demand the fight be called when he saw the boy on the other side of the pit, catching his breath and wiping the blood off his face. He looked back at the gutted animal and saw the three remaining healthy Gra'natksh were tearing up the one with the wire around its neck.

The boy, still watching the pack tear up one of their own, began to bandage his slashed right leg, his only obvious injury so far. The boy stretched rather casually and then took another knife from the pack strapped to his hip. While the pack was busy snout down in their dying comrade, the boy charged.

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Naruto leapt onto the nearest creature, jamming a kunai into the center of its back, hoping to cut the spinal cord. It kept moving, and he leapt away, forced to abandon the knife as two other creatures charged him. He hopped backwards across the arena floor, stopping when his back hit the wall. The creature he'd stabbed in the back staggered and fell. The other two creatures' charge changed to a cautious stalk.

He could hear the screams of the crowd, for and against him. It wasn't really like the chunin exams, but he'd missed that by months now. As he pulled out another handful of shuriken, he hoped Sasuke hadn't made chunin. He'd be insufferable when Naruto got home. Still, he had to make this a good fight, so his team wouldn't think he'd gone completely soft while he was gone.

Naruto tossed the metal stars and managed to hit one of the creatures in the eye. But unfortunately, that didn't start a fight like last time. Naruto took the last kunai from his pouch. He hoped his next attack finished them, because he was not looking forward to digging the other knives out of those other creatures' guts in the middle of the fight.

On some cue Naruto didn't catch, the creatures charged. He darted sideways, putting one of the creatures between him and its buddy. It lunged at him and he ducked down. The head passed above him, blocking his view of everything above, even as its chest knocked into him. He thrust upward with the kunai. The skin under the throat was thicker than he thought it would be. The blade skidded across it, drawing a little blood, but it was barely a scratch.

Its arms looped around him, trying to catch him in a bear hug. He pushed as much chakra as he could manage into his arm and punched upward. The creature was knocked back onto its rearmost legs, and tottered for a moment, trying to catch its balance. Naruto lunged in with his knife, slashing open the creature's belly. This time he leapt fast enough to avoid the spilling guts.

He whirled, searching for the last creature. He'd lost track of it. Nothing else in the arena moved, though the spectators' screams and waves were still distractingly strong.

Naruto counted. Six creatures lay unmoving on the floor of the pit.

"Did I win?" he asked, mostly to himself.

He frowned. The last creature hadn't been hurt that badly, aside from the shuriken in its eye. He supposed it could've passed out from shock or something, but he knew he wasn't that lucky. That meant one of these stinking piles wasn't that dead.

He watched carefully, but none of them breathed. A couple were twitching, but he was pretty sure that was just corpse spasm. They were all covered in blood, though he knew it couldn't be the ones with their guts hanging out. And it isn't the one with the wire around its neck…he thought. Not the one with the knife…and that leaves you…

He circled the creature he'd picked out. It was on its side with half its face hidden in the sand, so he couldn't be absolutely certain it was the one he hit in the eye. He scooted around behind it, planning to stab the spinal cord as he'd done with the other, but as he leaned in with the knife, the creature rolled over.

He leapt back, and avoided being cut, but the clawed hands caught the leg of his pants and pulled him off balance, sending him sprawling sideways as the cloth tore. It was on top of him in an instant, its jaws hanging wide as it lunged at his throat. He thrust the kunai up, but realized he'd misjudged distances. Instead of stabbing it in the face, his arm had gone inside its mouth. At the last second he turned the knife vertically. The creature bit down.

Naruto shrieked.

The creature pitched forward on top of him, its teeth digging into his arm. He kicked and the creature thrashed, squashing him down into the sand. He focused his chakra and kicked upward. The creature rolled over, but its jaws were still locked on his arm and he ended up on top of it as it kicked and spasmed, and finally went still.

He gasped for a moment, getting his thoughts together, trying to remember what to do in a situation like this.

**Get that thing off your arm! **A voice in his head commanded.

"Right," he muttered.

He put his foot against the upper jaw and grabbed the gums of the lower with his free hand. It took a lot of effort to pry it open, and lift his arm up off its teeth.

"Winner Uzumaki Naruto!" the droid announced.

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"They actually tried to hide the injuries from me at first," Shmi said. "I was certain he was going to lose the entire limb, but he healed up as good as new a few weeks later. There wasn't even a scar. And after that first victory, the fight promoters came looking for him."

"So he killed a bunch of horrible monsters and got the money to free you?" Jiraiya asked.

"That was the boys' plan, originally," she said. "But then there was the incident with the Wookies."

"What kind of incident?" Jiraiya asked.

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**Author's note**: Sorry this chapter took so long!


	5. Chapter 5

**A Village Hidden in Hope**

**By Marz**

**The Sand Spirit: Part IV**

"I'm sorry, okay? We'll get it back!" Naruto said.

"I'm not mad!" Anakin shrieked.

"I'll enter the G'drog unregulated. We'll be able to buy you guys out inside a month."

"Mom would kill you!" Anakin said.

"I'm sorry, okay?"

"Stop saying that!"

Anakin glared at the ground as they trudged back out to the red quarter. Naruto had won the eight rounds, and they'd put 3,800 in the account, but that looked just plain sad when compared to the 42,000 they'd had before.

"They're still following us," Anakin said.

"I know," Naruto said. "Maybe they don't have anywhere to go."

Anakin nodded and glanced over his shoulder. The three wookies were still trailing behind them. They had enough trouble with just Naruto staying with them. He didn't think they'd be able to save anything at all to buy themselves out if they had three new mouths to feed, especially since the two adults were on the far side of 200 kg. They might be able to feed the baby one, but it was already as big as Anakin. Naruto stopped, waved his arms and made a sort of gargling bellow at the wookies.

"Stop doing that!" Anakin demanded. "You aren't saying anything! You're just going to make them mad!"

"Sounds the same to me," Naruto said.

Shmi was waiting up for them with the note Anakin had left. She'd ordered them both to stay away from the pits, but she knew she couldn't control Naruto's wandering, and Anakin didn't have much trouble sneaking out after him. She looked at Naruto's blood-splattered clothes and her jaw clenched so hard the lower part of her face went pale.

"Are either of you hurt?" she asked.

Naruto had a couple of deep slashes in his back that Anakin had helped him tape shut, but he wasn't going to mention those. They both shook their heads.

"Go to bed. We'll talk about this in the morning."

They both just stood.

"Shmi-mama-sama," Naruto began haltingly.

She looked at him, but it wasn't a glare. She never glared; it was always that terrified look that was just short of tears.

"I…we…that is…um…sort of…wookies," he finally managed.

"Wookies?" Shmi asked.

Naruto nodded. Anakin elbowed him in the hopes that he'd tell the rest of the story, but Naruto seemed to think saying "Wookies" explained it all. And then said wookies came up to the doorway, and Shmi said "oh", so maybe it did.

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**Earlier that evening…**

Tatooine was the worst planet Shreevok had ever been to, and that was saying a lot. He thought he'd seen a tree as he was escorted from the ship to the arena, but it had turned out to be a slow-moving biped with branch-like antlers. He was glad the vile human Frecosh wasn't bringing Mroookee and their son to watch him fight. His mate might be able to stand the relentless suns, but their child would get heat stroke within minutes of walking on the surface of this twice-blasted pit of a world.

If the world was ugly, the people there were hideous. He saw a female Cal'esh shot in the street as they passed. A few people stopped to look, but no one made any move to exact justice. The human who had shot her just walked away. Jawas ran from an alley to scavenge the corpse. No one else marked the female's passing, so Shreevok howled for her, hoping her spirit would understand, even if he didn't know her language. One of his handlers struck him in the side with a shock baton.

"Shut it, fur bag," the armored human said.

Shreevok resisted the urge to tear the smaller biped's arms off. Frecosh saw his struggle for self-control and smirked at him.

The arena was fairly standard, an ugly metal structure that looked like it had been welded together from the remains of wrecked cargo haulers. He was dragged through several security checkpoints, before finally arriving in the staging area. He saw a few Blish and a Gramorean. None of them looked too competent. He'd probably survive this day, and so would his family.

"First round, gate three; let's go!" announced one of his handlers, walking over with the data cards.

The gates were surrounded by transparent force fields so the audience could see the two competitors and place bets. The competitors could also see and hear each other, and make threats if they so desired. Shreevok stepped into his gate and the force field came up. He calmed himself. He had done this before, he could do it again. He looked over at his competition. There was a human child standing in the opposition box.

"{What's that doing in there?}" Shreevok growled as he was weighed in by the arena's betting regulators.

"That's your opponent," the droid answered.

He turned towards Frecosh, growling in outrage. "{I will not kill a child for their entertainment!}"

The human snorted. "You will if you want the missus and the brat to live," Frecosh said. "Besides, the odds are in the kid's favor, not yours."

He didn't see how that could be. The human was less than a quarter his weight, and obviously not anywhere near adult intelligence. The Um Sinda League was an all-weapons-legal tournament, so it was possible the boy had technology to make up for his physical shortcomings, but as Shreevok looked over the boy's stats as they were posted, he saw the only weapons he carried were knives, throwing stars, and wire. Shreevok saw his own blasters being examined and felt a bit sick. If he'd been allowed to carry them, he'd have been sorely tempted to end Frecosh's life right then, but that was why he was never armed until right before he was sent into the ring.

Shreevok was not fond of humans. Their faces always looked so naked and their voices chirped and bubbled instead of making proper sounds. He supposed they'd be easier to deal with if they didn't look so much like someone had shaved some poor wookie. Still, he didn't know if he could live with murdering one of their offspring, even to save his own family.

"Hey, what's the problem, mister?" the orange-clad human child asked.

"{What are you doing here, boy? You'll be killed. Who is sending you to your death?}" Shreevok said.

"Hu?" the human said.

"He thinks you're too young to be in a death match," Frecosh said in Basic. "You could drop out to make him feel better."

"Up yours, old man! I don't quit!" the boy shouted.

"{Who put you up to this? It's a terrible idea.}" Shreevok demanded, loudly.

"Quit your bellyaching!" Frecosh said, taking a shock baton from one the guards, and zapping Shreevok with it.

Shreevok howled a few curses, but Frecosh had already stepped out of reach.

The orange-clad boy looked back and forth between Shreevok and Frecosh several times. Then an offended expression settled on his face. "Hey! He's a slave. They don't allow slaves in the Um Sinda League!" the human boy said. "That's a disqualification!"

There were a few fighting circuits that didn't allow slaves. They were rare this far out on the rim. Shreevok was a bit surprised to realize he'd been entered in one. Of course, that didn't change things. Frecosh had prepared for this exact circumstance.

A promoter droid rolled over. "Disqualification Query?" it asked in a buzzing voice.

"No," Frecosh said.

"Yes!" said the human boy. "He's a slave--slaves aren't allowed in this competition!"

"Record check in progress," it said. "Inquiry complete. Subject 45be4r100110; Shreevok of Kashyyk. Released from slavery as of 67/979/679, under nonbinding contract. Related record, mate, Mroookee and off-spring, unnamed, still in possession of Tray Frecosh industries. Entrant still qualified despite second-degree relationship."

"What?" the human asked.

Frecosh sighed. "We own his family. He's free to leave at any time. Isn't that right, fur bag? I guess we could make up your loss by hiring out your mate and brat. The brothel in Mos Toka is looking for new exotics."

Shreevok growled, but held himself in check. Frecosh provoked him all the time. He'd learned not to react. Every blow he landed on his handlers would be brought back on his family ten times worse. He was a bit surprised when his opponent lunged at Frecosh in his stead. The human's eyes turned bright red as he leapt forward and bounced off the security force field.

The force field was meant to keep opponents away from each other before the paying customers could see them. It delivered a nasty shock, but the boy didn't even seem fazed. He jumped into it again.

"You bastard!" the human boy shouted.

The air around him was turning foul, and Shreevok could smell something evil in the arena. The human boy's eyes were turning red. He charged the force field again. Frecosh took a frightened step back, into the force field surrounding Shreevok. He yelped and collapsed, and Shreevok couldn't quite control his laughter.

The human child grinned at Shreevok and the red faded from his eyes.

"Don't worry, Fuzzy, I'll get you out of this," the boy said. "And I never go back on my word."

{"If you want to help, drop out of the fight,"} Shreevok howled, but the human clearly didn't understand him.

"Hu?" the boy asked, as the lighting changed. "You'll have to tell me later, Fuzzy. The fight's about to start. Just play along, okay?"

An alarm rang and the force fields dropped. The boy leapt into the arena and Shreevok jumped in, too. They faced off.

The boy crouched, his feet digging into the filthy sand of the arena floor. Shreevok had seen the boy leap into the ring. He'd seen how fast he was. He knew a normal human couldn't move that way, and this boy could not be a hapless child sent to his death, but he still couldn't bring himself to attack.

The boy lunged at him, and instead of drawing his blaster, Shreevok caught the boy's collar and tossed him aside. The boy landed neatly on his feet, grinning.

"Chill, Fuzzy. Just follow my lead."

The boy charged. He moved so fast Shreevok's eyes could barely track him. He leaned down, intending to bat the much smaller biped away when he got close enough, but the boy dodged around his outstretched arms, and kicked up into the wookie's gut.

Shreevok was lifted up off his feet and landed with a thump in the sand. The breath had been knocked out of him, but he rolled over and got to his feet, just in time for the boy's feet to slam into his chest. Again, he was knocked down. He got up and this time he managed to dodge the boy. They faced off again. Shreevok shook the sand from his fur. The finer particles stayed in the air, tickling his nose.

The crowd was jeering and calling for blood, disappointed that neither combatant had used a blade. The boy backed off, grinning. Shreevok wasn't sure if it was compassion or mockery.

"Ready?" the boy asked.

Shreevok just roared. He didn't know what the boy meant, and could not have said "just get it over with" in Basic if he tried.

The boy charged. Shreevok went to block again, but the boy caught his arm and twisted. Shreevok was pulled off his feet and swung in a circle. Shreevok expected to be thrown into a wall, but the boy didn't let go. He kept an iron grip on the wookie's arm and continued to spin. Shreevok did bounce off the arena floor several times, kicking up clouds of dirty sand. Just when he thought his arm would be torn off, the boy twisted back suddenly, throwing Shreevok high in the air.

He came level with the third tier of bleachers before he dropped back down. He couldn't see the arena floor for the dust cloud that had been raised. He thought he saw his opponent and another figure amid the grit. But he didn't have time to think about it. He was falling too fast. He brought up his arms to break his fall, and got his legs under him. He didn't think it would help. Bones would snap, and any way you look at it, he had lost. He had let down Mroookee and Rehaak. He felt a something wrap around his chest and pull. For a moment he thought the boy was going to throw him up in the air again, but then there was smoke around him and it was suddenly dark.

He landed hard on a concrete floor, but not hard enough to break anything. He thought he heard a popping sound as he whirled around, trying to find the boy. He stood up and banged his head on something. He growled in frustration.

"Hey! Mister! You have to be quiet!" a young voice hissed in Basic.

Shreevok looked down and saw another human child, even smaller than the one he had been fighting. There was a little bit of light coming through the ceiling, and he realized he could see the bottoms of numerous alien feet and boots through a grating. They were under the bleachers. He saw another narrow slit of light in the wall. He stumbled to it, bumping his head on the low ceiling, again. He could see the arena floor. The cleanup droids were coming out to pick up a wookie corpse, as the human fighter in orange stood watching. As the droids rolled the corpse on a stretcher, Shreevok realized the dead wookie looked just like him.

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**Five minutes earlier…**

Anakin placed the bet. He tucked his datapad into his jacket and headed for the stands. Usually Naruto got him into the trainers' section, but tonight there were a couple of goons in there who worked the pod-racing circuits as well. If they recognized Anakin, they might take steps to keep him from competing in his own sport. Naruto would be too busy fighting to the death to keep an eye on him.

He was about to sit down when a hand clamped down over his mouth. An arm clamped around his chest and he was dragged up the steps. A few people looked in his direction, but no one said anything, much less came to his aid. He was dragged out into the hall and then through an access door. Anakin reached for the knife Naruto had insisted he wear. His fingers had just closed on the handle when the one holding him let go. Anakin pulled out the blade and whirled, but his orange-clad attacker hopped easily out of the way.

"You did better than the last time I grabbed you," Naruto said, grinning.

"You're supposed to be in the weigh-in area!" Anakin hissed.

"I am," Naruto said. "I'm a clone. Come on! We have like one minute."

"What?" Anakin said.

He'd seen Naruto do this two-places-at-once thing a few times. He could not or would not explain how he did it, but it worried Anakin to no end. One Naruto caused enough trouble.

"We've got to save the guy I'm fighting," Naruto said.

"From who?" Anakin asked, as Naruto grabbed his arm and dragged him into yet another hall and then under the bleachers.

"Okay, when the wookie guy gets here, find out the name of the guy who owns his family and how much they want for them. The guy's here somewhere, so you can probably buy them right after I kill him in the match, but he won't really be dead, you just explain everything to him and hide him until you've got his family free. Okay?"

"No! What do you mean? Whose family?" Anakin asked.

"You'll see in a minute. I've got to go!" Naruto said.

Naruto's hands waved in those strange patterns he called seals and then he vanished in a puff of smoke. In his place stood a seven-foot-tall, fur-covered howling creature. Anakin flinched back, bringing up his hands to protect his face. But the wookie didn't attack him. Anakin risked looking up at him. The huge creature was looking around, baffled. It whined.

"Hey mister, you need to be quiet," Anakin said.

The wookie paused to look at him, and then roared something. Anakin sighed. It wasn't going to get any better waiting.

"Come on, mister," Anakin said. "I don't speak your language, but I think you know Basic. Come on, there isn't much time!"

Anakin led the wookie to one of the data consoles he knew wasn't guarded. He pried off the cover and started slicing. After a moment, wires and circuit boards hung out the side like spilled guts. He hooked in his datapad, and scrolled through the files related to all the contestants. Fortunately, this guy was the only wookie in the competition: Shreevok of Kkashyk. There were a lot of linked files. He hissed in frustration. He couldn't see any obvious link to a slave owner.

"Bring up the data for the company that owns your family," Anakin said, handing the wookie the datapad, hoping he would recognize the information they needed.

Shreevok made a frustrated noise.

"All the lines are open," Anakin said. "I don't know enough about this to find them, so you have to get me started. We don't have a lot of time!"

Reluctantly, the wookie took the datapad. A few dozen keystrokes later, he had the data on the screen. Anakin took the pad back and continued slicing through the data, eventually bringing up a list of recent credit transactions between the arena and Tray Frecosh.

"They just got a permit to bring two wookie slaves to the morgue to pick up your body," the boy said. "That's probably your family, right?"

Shreevok nodded.

"Alright, you go back under the bleachers and hide, and I'll go make an offer on them," Anakin said.

Shreevok shook his head.

"No, you have to wait here," Anakin insisted. "If they see you, you'll give the whole thing away."

The wookie roared in what Anakin assumed was a negative manner.

"Uhhhh, how about we find some place closer for you to hide?" Anakin said. "You know this won't work if they see you."

Shreevok nodded.

The wookie followed him through a twisting series of halls. He didn't falter once on the way to the morgue, and it took him all of ten seconds to slice the lock and get the door open. A droid inside was guarding the bodies, but it didn't react to their entrance, or when Anakin started looking under tables for a place large enough for Shreevok to hide. Eventually he managed to cram the giant wookie inside a supply closet, though he had to turn sideways and bend his knees. Anakin closed the door a moment before Frecosh and his party entered.

The lady wookie was very loud, and it didn't take a genius to figure out she was very upset. She elbowed the guards who shoved her through the door. They hit her with a stun baton, but she didn't seem to care. She only settled down when the guards waved their batons in a threatening manner at the baby wookie. Anakin wasn't sure if the baby was a boy or a girl, and the data he sliced didn't say. Of course, he wouldn't have known the lady wookie was female if he hadn't peeked at the files.

Frecosh was a large human. He was wearing a lot of dark clothing, and Anakin suspected there was some sort of coolant system inside it, so he wouldn't sweat in Tatooine's heat. He ignored Anakin completely as he walked into the room. It was always like that. People always thought he was useless and worthless, that he could be ignored. They underestimated him, though, and this time it was to his advantage.

"Hey, Mister Frecosh!" Anakin said loudly.

The man looked around the room. It took a long time for his gaze to settle on Anakin.

"What do you want, slave?" Frecosh asked.

"My boss heard you had a couple of wookies," Anakin said. "He wants to buy them."

"And who's your boss?" Frecosh asked.

"Uzumaki Naruto," He replied. "I think he tried to kill you before the match."

Frecosh snorted. "Wookies ain't cheap, boy," he said as he took out a datapad. Anakin assumed he was checking Naruto's credit.

"Well, they can't be worth much. Only that one could fight, and not very well, obviously," Anakin said.

"What's your boss want with a wookie?" Frecosh asked.

"I don't know, and I don't want to know, but he told me to buy them if they weren't too expensive," Anakin said. "It seems like any money would be a waste for them, but I do what I'm told."

"They're good for labor," Frecosh said. "I'll sell you the offspring for 25,000. We haven't invested much in it yet, anyway."

"15,000 for the pair," Anakin said.

"Nice try, kid. The female is worth at least 75,000," he said.

"To who? There isn't a big market for a furry, water-guzzling creature on a world like this," Anakin said. "You might as well be selling Mon Calamari."

Frecosh snorted again.

"Come on," Anakin said. "They'll end up costing you more in the long run. The female's obviously gone crazy and you know she'll break something expensive the minute you get her back to your ship."

"She has always been a high-strung fur bag," Frecosh said.

"Stubborn slaves just aren't worth the trouble," Anakin said. As he spoke, he pushed against the idea, as if he could push the thought from his own mind into the man's.

"No," Frecosh said, sounding strangely vague. "They aren't."

Anakin was sweating. He wanted to wipe his forehead with his sleeve, but he thought the slaver would see that as a sign of weakness. They went on like that for another ten minutes, Anakin mentioning the problems the wookies would probably cause, while Frecosh allowed for slight decreases in price. He felt as if he weren't just talking to the man, but also leaning on him at the same time. Every time the bid dropped, Anakin felt like the leaning was getting less effective.

"40,000 for the pair, and you deal with refitting controllers yourself," Frecosh said "I'll even throw in the dead one for free."

Anakin decided not to press his luck.

"Deal," Anakin said.

His hand shook as he signed the transfer and put the credit chip in the slot, all that money gone. They were so close and now they'd be starting over completely. The slaver apparently noticed his reluctance.

"Your owner lets you toss around this much money?" Frecosh said.

"If I do something wrong, I won't live to regret it," Anakin said. "I haven't screwed up yet."

"You're a pretty good negotiator, kid. You think your master would sell your contract?" Frecosh asked.

"Probably not," the human boy said. "He couldn't put on his shoes without my help."

Anakin went to work on his datapad, overriding the controllers with new protocols.

"Well, good luck with them, boy," Frecosh said as he and his security guards started for the door.

Anakin responded with a noncommittal grunt. It seemed as if it was all going to work out, but then the lady wookie let out a stricken bellow and threw herself at what she thought was the body of her mate. She landed hard on the corpse's chest, and it popped, vanishing in a puff of smoke. Frecosh whirled and his guards whirled with him.

"Oh, crap," Anakin mumbled.

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Shreevok roared and burst from the closet. The guards turned and fired, but Shreevok's foot caught on something and he fell beneath their line of fire. He drew his own blaster and shot one of them in the groin. Mroookee grabbed up Rehaak and the human boy and yanked them behind the meager shelter of the autopsy tables as blaster bolts went flying back and forth across the room. Frecosh ducked out the door as his guards fired.

Shreevok tore the top off one of the tables and used it as a shield, charging the guards. Two were struck with blaster bolts and he used the now-smoldering tabletop to slam a third into the wall. The last guard darted out the door after his boss. Shreevok chased him a few steps, but the guard rounded a corner and ducked past a medical droid, who was towing the body of another loser back to the morgue. Shreevok gave up the chase and returned to find his mate and child.

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**The Skywalker hut…**

Anakin thought of himself as pretty good with languages, but as he'd never been around wookies, (they rarely came to the desert world) he'd never had a chance to learn any. He hoped the program he'd sliced from the grid and patched into the droid was on the level. The droid's eyes lit up, and it started a vocal systems check, going through assorted strange noises before finally settling into something that sounded basically human but incredibly fussy.

"I am C3PO, human-cyborg relations. I am fluent in- Where's the rest of me?"

"I'm working on it," Anakin said. "Is the Wookie-to-Basic program functioning?"

"Yes, though without arms, some communicative gestures may be omitted."

"That's fine," Anakin said.

"If I had at least one arm-" the droid continued.

"Just work with what you have," Anakin said.

"I suppose I'm ready," the droid said.

Anakin carried the head into the main room where their guests were seated. The wookies started roaring.

"Oh my," 3PO said. "Oh…oh really…was it? Alright….yes…I suppose…oh dear….I see."

"Could you have made that robot any more annoying?" Naruto asked.

"That's the base program; he came like that!" Anakin insisted.

Naruto mumbled something about an A-level assassination of the designer. The wookies finally stopped roaring.

"It appears that Master Shreevok and Mistress Mroookee were piloting a cargo ship back from Durion Sigma when they were overtaken by slavers. They would have fought to the death, had Mistress Mroookee not been with child. In the six cycles since then, they've passed through two other slavers before Frecosh entered Shreevok in the fighting pits with his wife and child as hostage. Since the Um Sinda League bans slaves as fighters, Shreevok was technically free, but if he failed to win a fight, Mroookee or the child would've been executed. Because of your actions this night, they are now free. Furthermore, he has seen that you put their lives above the freedom of your family. For this reason, he owes you a life debt on behalf of his family."

"Hu?" Naruto said.

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**The Present….**

"So if you save a wookie's life, they have to stay with you for the rest of yours and keep you out of trouble?" Jiraiya asked.

"Essentially, yes," Shmi said.

"So if a wookie goes to the doctor…?"

"Healers are very respected in wookie culture even if all they do is treat mange, but most major surgeries are performed by medical droids" Shmi said. "To be honest, I don't know how they decide who needs to be watched."

"So they lost all their money saving these wookies?" Jiraiya asked.

Shmi nodded.

"So what does that have to do with Naruto getting you free?"

"Naruto probably could've continued pit fighting, but a situation arose, and he had to take some shortcuts."

Jiraiya stood up and stretched. "Let me guess, this shortcut leads to another long story."

"Am I boring you?" Shmi asked. "I ramble on sometimes, I know. If you are feeling well enough, we could take a short walk to the village museum," Shmi said.

Jiraiya figured he could use the exercise after the long morning of sitting and listening. He nodded and they set out. The pace was very slow, and from the moment they left Shmi's house, the sannin felt like he was about to catch fire from the intense sunlight. Shmi didn't seem bothered at all, though, nor did the people they passed. Jiraiya kept an eye peeled for the tentacle-headed woman he'd met on the sand-boat to the village, but all he saw were dozens of modestly-clothed individuals, hiding their skin from the sun. Quite a few of them noted Jiraiya's headband, and exchanged excited whispers in a language he still couldn't understand.

Jiraiya nodded to the ones who made eye contact.

His legs were starting to feel shaky by the time they reached the museum, though they probably hadn't gone even a quarter mile. He held the railing as they walked down the steps toward the entrance. From the top, blinded by the sun, Jiraiya had thought the entryway was an arch with elaborate carvings, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw the path leading into the building led through the mouth of a huge reptilian skull set into packed sand walls. He reached up as they walked through. His fingers barely brushed the tips of the creature's dagger-like teeth.

"That was a Kyrat dragon," Shmi said. "If you want that story," Shmi said, "put your hand on the plaque."

Just past the skull there was an engraved metal plaque in the wall, but he couldn't read it. Under the plaque there was a small black dome with a blinking light inside it.

Jiraiya obeyed, brushing his fingers across the metal. A blue light shot from the dome, shining on the floor in front of him. The light grew brighter and solidified, into a familiar, spiky-haired boy. He was taller than the last time Jiraiya had seen him, but his shrill voice cracked and broke as he excitedly spoke to an audience he couldn't see.

"Hi, everybody!" Naruto declared. "I guess if you're here, you already saw the awesome skull!"

Jiraiya realized this was another recording of some sort, rather than genjutsu. It was also speaking his own language, not the "Basic" that he'd picked up.

"Alright!" the glowing, semi-transparent Naruto said. "This takes a while, and I've recorded this five times already, so I know, so if you have to pee or something, maybe you should go and come back. You can pause this by touching the plaque again. No? Alright! Let's do this!"

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**Author's Note: **So yeah, this chapter was supposed to be twice this long, but there is one really important scene in the second half that I just can't get to work out. Let me know what you think!


	6. Chapter 6

**A Village Hidden in Hope**

**By Marz**

**The Sand Spirit: Part V**

**The slave quarters, years earlier…**

"You're doing it wrong," Naruto said.

"You're explaining it wrong," Anakin said, trying to adjust his stance.

"Ok, see, when they try to stab you in the neck, you're supposed to block like this and have your hand like this so you can grab the knife away from them. Try it."

"Don't really stab me, ok?" Anakin said.

"It's not even a real knife!" Naruto complained, flipping the piece of duraplast they were practicing with. Naruto had even dulled the edges so Shmi-mama-sama wouldn't complain.

"If you poke me in the eye with it, I'll still be blind," Anakin argued.

"Fine," Naruto said, muttering 'scaredy-cat' under his breath.

Naruto lunged in with the fake knife again, and this time Anakin did the block mostly right. He managed to deflect the knife away from his neck but ended up getting poked in the stomach. Apparently, he was supposed to step forward and push back after he had control of his attacker's arm, but Naruto had forgotten to mention that part until Anakin was sitting on the ground rubbing his sore midriff.

"Ah! Training the younger sibling?" a voice called.

The boys turned to look. A rather well-fed humanoid male was coming through the slave quarters towards the empty lot they were practicing in. The humanoid had a half-dozen armed and armored guards with him, and one battle droid trailing behind like a spider. Anakin thought this was probably the source of the tense, sick feeling he'd had all morning.

"What's it to you, mister?" Naruto asked with a scowl.

"To me? Oh, well, nothing really, but to my boss, it's somewhat important," the man said. "He sent me out to this charming ghetto to inspect some merchandise he was considering purchasing. Come here, boy," he said, pointing at Anakin.

Naruto growled and it wasn't a human sound.

"You've got to run this by Watto," Anakin said, backing up.

"Oh, I already have," the man said, cheerfully holding up a data pad crawling with Watto's signature. "Now come here."

Anakin felt Naruto tensing, and the air around him was getting red. Anakin was afraid to look him in the eye.

"Don't do anything," Anakin warned Naruto. All the guards had their blasters not-so-subtly trained on the orange-clad boy, but he probably wasn't even there anymore. "Just don't do anything," Anakin repeated.

Anakin walked up to the man, stopping just out of reach. The man grabbed his shoulder and started to pull him closer, but suddenly Naruto was standing in the narrow space between them, with a knife pressed to the fat man's throat. The guards were just starting to realize their charge was in danger when Naruto spoke.

"I don't know what Watto thinks he's thinking, but you better think about how dead you're going to be if you mess with my little brother."

"Perhaps just a scan," the man said, still sounding annoyingly cheerful, but a nervous edge was creeping in.

"It's fine!" Anakin said.

Naruto nodded, and vanished in a puff of smoke.

The man let go of Anakin and let him step back. The man took a metal wand that was linked to his data pad by a cord and waved it over Anakin.

"Hmmm, controller intact, no parasites, slightly underweight, prepubescent human male, hmmmm, no other alterations or cybernetics, hmmmmm, no stress injuries or recent skeletal fractures. You're a light-use slave, I take it?"

"I work in a junkyard," Anakin said, not liking the leer he was getting. "I do salvage and reprogramming."

"And who trained you to do that?"

"Nobody, I'm just good at it."

"Your owner says you fly a pod racer too," the man mumbled, rolling his eyes.

"I do!" Anakin said. "I finished third in the Eisley open, and I made Watto a lot of money, so he isn't going to sell me, so why don't you leave and stop wasting everyone's time?"

"A human that races pods and a human that fights battle droids in the pits," the man said. "They sure grow some interesting things in this dump. Well, I suppose I'll be seeing you."

"Not if you've got the brains you were born with," Naruto said, from behind the oversized man this time. The guards were again startled and rushed to aim at him.

"It's not really up to me," the still-nameless man said. "You're dealing with Boroka the Hutt now."

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**Watto's House…**

Watto looked up and down the street, more than a little nervous. There were a few lazy, overpaid security guards leaning against the wall at the end of the block. They were barely competent enough to keep the Jawas out of the neighborhood. They'd be no help at all if Boroka came after him.

He pressed his hand to the panel and typed in his code. The door opened, and he hurried in.

His small house was very clean, and when he checked the preserver, he found the Skywalker woman had left his prepared dinner and morning meal inside. He had gotten out of the habit of checking his food for poison. He'd done it for a full year after he'd made her cook for him, but it seemed like she wasn't going to carry out a revenge scheme on her former owners' behalf. Tonight he checked.

Boroka had noticed him and that meant all kinds of evil was headed his way. Boroka was no Jabba, but as Hutts went, he was still terrible.

For the first time, he wished he hadn't won the Skywalkers, despite the fact that they'd tripled the amount of money he made off his junkyard business, and their strange relative Naruto had won thousands of credits for him in the pits.

That would all change with them gone. Watto knew Naruto was saving up to buy his two slaves out of bondage, but Watto thought Anakin and his mother would probably still remain in his employ. He'd have to pay them a salary, but the Skywalkers had few connections and it would be a long time before they got enough money to be completely independent. Boroka would take them, though. He'd have to start over again.

Watto had enough money to buy new slaves, but he didn't really know how to train them. And training would take years and they probably still wouldn't be as useful as the boy and his mother. All his luck was leaving him.

And then there was Naruto to deal with. The boy could tear battle droids to shreds. If Boroka didn't get him, that human would. Watto tried to think of something else, something more cheerful. After all, if you think of the devil, he appears. He pulled a data pad off a shelf and tried to find something to bet on.

There was a scraping sound above him and Watto looked up. Naruto was crouching on the ceiling above him. The boy was dragging a knife across the adobe. He just watched him. He didn't say anything. Watto decided he had to talk first. He tried not to sound scared.

"What you want, human?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be home …sleeping or something?"

"You're going to sell them," Naruto growled.

His eyes had turned red, and Watto had seen him in enough fights to know that was a bad sign.

"I haven't sold anything," Watto said. "But when a Hutt says they are interested, you have to pay them attention. You know that. They are not happy to hear no."

"You can't sell them," Naruto said, stalking forward.

He didn't leap from the shelf; he stalked straight down the wall, as if gravity had no effect on him.

"If I tell the Hutt I won't sell, he will have me killed; my property will go to auction. The Hutt will get them anyway."

"So sell them to me," Naruto said.

"So what, you get them, and Boroka has me killed in revenge? That won't work, either," Watto said, "Unless you've got enough saved up to get me off this planet, and out of Hutt space."

The human frowned, the color fading from his eyes. "How much do you need?" he asked.

"I'd need at least 100,000 credits, and that doesn't even count my shop. But I doubt you could get even that much before I have to give the Hutt an answer. You'd have to steal a freight ship or find a dragon pearl. It won't happen."

The human frowned, and his face wrinkled up. Watto knew enough about humans to know their faces scrunched when they thought hard.

"Maybe if you disappeared for a while, the Hutt would lose interest," Watto suggested. "They want the Skywalkers to get to you, yes? If you go, there is no problem."

"But how long?" Naruto said. "And the Hutt might still want Anakin cause he's a good pilot."

The human went back to making a thinking-face. "Promise," he said finally.

"What?" the toydarian asked

"Promise you won't sell them until when I get back."

"Back from where?" Watto asked.

"I'll get one of those pearl things," Naruto said. "I just need to find a dragon."

"You'd be better off trying to steal a freighter."

"Wouldn't work--I don't get all that machine stuff. But one time I killed a giant snake. Well, it ate me and I blew it up from the inside. But it was big, and like a dragon, kind of. Do Kyrat dragons really breathe fire?"

Watto blew a bunch of air out his nose. It was the toydarian equivalent of a sigh. "I can promise only one week, human," Watto said. "Boroka the Hutt has no mercy, but he respects a higher offer. The date is set. It's the best I can do."

Naruto nodded and then vanished in a puff of smoke.

Watto went around his house, checking all the door and windows. They were locked and sealed. He went to his bed and set his blaster on the mattress next to him. The room still seemed too big and dark and filled with too many places for enemies to hide. Eventually he pulled the blankets up over his head.

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"Anakin, where do dragons live?" Naruto asked as he picked through a box of scrap gear that Anakin kept in the corner of his room.

Anakin had been forced to share the space with Naruto for about a year now, but he still considered it his and not theirs. Of course, if Boroka bought them, it wouldn't be anyone's. Boroka's compound was halfway around the planet. Not only would Anakin be separated from his friends and all things familiar, but he had heard Boroka didn't allow his slaves any sort of privacy or free time. Compared to Boroka, Watto was a saint.

Anakin knew it was stupid, but he blamed Naruto. All Naruto wanted to do was help, and for a while Anakin had let himself hope. Naruto fought hard, and he'd saved up all that money, and they had been so close…

But the money was gone, and the price of freedom had shot up so high they'd never be able to pay it.

"Anakin?"

"What?" Anakin snapped.

"Where do dragons live?" Naruto asked again. "The kind with pearls inside."

"Most of the hunters look for them around the Jundland Wastes, but they haven't found any recently, as far as I've heard. Why do you want to know?"

Once in a while, a big hunting party would come through Mos Espa before heading out into the Wastes. Anakin had seen them leave, but he couldn't remember any coming back. They could've been too embarrassed by failure to show their faces, but Anakin had a feeling that most of them were still out there, dead.

"Watto said if I could bring him a dragon pearl, he'd let you guys go, since it's worth more than the Hutt's offer," Naruto said. "He said he wouldn't sell you guys for at least a week."

"A week?" Anakin asked, as his chest clenched.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, so I've got to find a dragon pretty quick."

"You can't just walk into the desert and find one!" Anakin said. "It's not that easy. There's no way you could even find one in a week. And you'd still have to kill it! The ones with pearls are a hundred feet long. You'd need a concussion torpedo! You aren't going to take it out with one of your little knives."

"You don't know how big of a thing I can kill," Naruto said, waving a hand dismissively. "I find one, kill it, and come back here, no problem."

"You'll die out there!" Anakin said. "You don't remember the last time you were in the open desert? You'll die of thirst or just get lost and cook to death. Hunting a dragon is a stupid idea."

"Not stupid, just crazy," Naruto said. "Besides, if I'm gone, Boroka might not want you anymore."

Anakin felt his anger melt into shame. He hadn't really thought Naruto would follow them if Boroka was their new owner. They weren't really his family, and Boroka would make Naruto a slave if he could. He wondered how far Naruto would follow them. Naruto did call Shmi mama even though she wasn't. He tried to imagine what would happen if Boroka bought them and Naruto did follow them.

Anakin felt like he'd been slapped, and then the floor went out of under him. He blinked up at Naruto, who had dropped to his knees at his side and was shouting "Are you ok?" as the room went dark.

_Anakin blinked and saw his hands were bound together, and felt a control collar on his neck. His skin still stung from the shock it had delivered. He looked up. He was near the floor of the stadium, more so Naruto could see him than the other way around. Naruto was tearing up battle droids with his bare hands, his eyes an inhuman red. And more red light was oozing from his skin. Naruto had to use that awful, unclean power, because if he didn't, Boroka would kill Anakin, the way he had killed Shmi the last time Naruto failed. _

Anakin sat up with a gasp, and cracked heads with Naruto. Naruto whined about his nose, though Anakin had seen the boy punched in the face by a Gamorrean and grin afterwards. Anakin stumbled to his feet and away from him. His head spun. He knew what he just dreamed, just saw could not have been real, but it felt real. It felt hopeless and inescapable.

"What's wrong?" Naruto asked. "Do you need water? Are you heat-stroked?"

He knew it wasn't real, but he was sure it was still somehow Naruto's fault.

"Go away!" Anakin shrieked.

"What?" Naruto asked.

"Go away!" Anakin repeated. "Go back to the desert! Go back where you came from! Just go away!"

"Yeah, I'm going," Naruto said. "I'll come back when I got a dragon pearl."

"Just go!" Anakin said.

Naruto left, looking confused.

Anakin didn't know if what he'd seen was real, but it felt like it. Maybe he was just having heat stroke, but even if it was just a hallucination, it might still happen. It would be just like what happened to Shreevok and his family. That might even have been where Boroka got the idea.

If Naruto had just bought them out first, before he helped the Wookies…

Anakin bit his lip. If they hadn't helped Shreevok then and there, he and his family would have been tortured or killed. It was the right thing to do, and it was stupid and selfish to blame Naruto now. It was even more stupid to send him off on a suicide mission over some stupid dream that was probably heat stroke anyway.

Anakin ran out to tell Naruto not to go into the desert, that they would figure another way out of this.

By the time he got outside, there was no sign of him.

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Naruto had goggles this time, and a wide straw hat, and of course, gallons of bottled water. He wished he knew more about sealing or water jutsu, as the bottles were pretty heavy. He'd tried to figure out how to make seals on his own. He tried to figure out a lot of things on his own. During the past year on this strange planet with two suns, he hadn't come up with much. But he had a lot of practice with the jutsu he already knew.

"Kage Bunshin!" he called.

There was a momentary whiteout as the desert around him filled with smoke. Hundreds of clones spread out across the desert, running out into the Wastes. They ran until their chakra ran out or until sand people shot them. A couple were killed in rock slides. One was even dragged into a pit by a tentacle. None of the clones managed to find death by dragon, though. He didn't know how it worked, but when a clone was dispelled, everything it had learned or seen went straight into his brain. He marked off locations on the map as they explored and were destroyed.

Shreevok had helped him make a map on canvas, since he still couldn't get computers to agree with him. He paused to look at it again. The map wasn't drawn to scale. The Wastes were taking up most of the center, with the rest of the planet depicted smaller and off to the side. Landmarks were drawn out big and obvious. It was a very good map.

Shreevok had wanted to go with him, too. The big furry guy had gotten a job as a bouncer at a dive bar over in the Mos Eisley spaceport. Naruto had borrowed Anakin's droid head to ask the wookie for help with directions, since Anakin had gotten mad and screamy, and Naruto didn't want Shmi to know what he was doing since she would worry. Shreevok was all ready to quit his job and follow Naruto in the open desert. It took Naruto forever to convince him not to do that, since his family needed him, but nobody had ever done anything like that for Naruto before.

The first two days passed without much luck, so he decided to follow a caravan of Tuskens out across the wastes. Maybe a dragon would try to eat them, and Naruto could kill it.

According to some old guy at the Broken Glass cantina, sand people were supposed to go out and kill a dragon in some sort of adulthood ritual, but Naruto wasn't sure he believed that. He'd seen dozens of sand people and no dragons at all. Plus, he couldn't picture a sand person killing a dragon with just a gafi stick and the slow-moving oversized goat creatures they rode around on.

He didn't have much to do with the sand people. They sometimes shrieked and took pot shots at him with gafi sticks, but they did that to everyone who wasn't another sand person. Naruto liked them for their lack of prejudice. Still, he didn't want them to know he was following. He spent a day-and-a-half on their tails, but no dragon came rushing out to eat them. They did get in a fight with a pair of sand people from another tribe or something, but the smaller group turned tail and ran when they saw they weren't going to miraculously take out a caravan with five times their number. The fight didn't bring a dragon running. After that, Naruto gave up on them. He made another bunch of clones and sent them out randomly again.

It was the seventh day when one of his clones saw evidence of a dragon in a weird, bowl-shaped rock formation. It dispelled itself, and Naruto and the others converged on its location. The first sun had set by the time he got to the bowl. It didn't look too promising, but as he got closer, he saw a Bantha skull sticking out of the sand. There were huge teeth marks in the bone. Beyond it he saw the dragon.

It was bigger than the snake that had swallowed him in the forest of death, maybe even bigger than the one that freaky he-she Grass ninja was riding on. The fight with that creature was a blur in Naruto's mind, even right after it happened. He wasn't sure how he had managed to pin its head down and stop it from eating Sasuke, but he thought the Fox had something to do with it.

Naruto didn't really have a plan, but with no one around to see his clones, he supposed he could try just about everything and see what worked.

He ran through the seals and a clone appeared to his right. He held out a blaster rifle and the clone took it with a grin. When he created a clone, it had all the weapons Naruto carried, but cloned blasters never worked. He could use them to club people but they wouldn't fire.

The clone darted out across the sand. The dragon didn't stir as the clone crept up to it, and aimed the blaster at one of the sleeping creature's eyes. He stood in awe for a moment, and felt a bit sad. It must've taken the dragon a thousand years to grow this big, and he was going to kill it for a couple of stupid rocks. He had to do it, though; he'd picked this path and he didn't have time to go back and learn to steal spacecraft. The clone pulled the trigger.

To say the dragon woke up mad was underselling it. Its roar was loud enough to burst the clone, and the blaster fell into the sand. The real Naruto winced as he absorbed the clone's memory. He had seen into the creature's mouth, and its teeth were longer than his legs.

For a moment, Naruto contemplated returning to Mos Espa for backup, but there wasn't time. He gulped and made a few more clones. He had no intention of killing this giant reptile from the inside.

**-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-00-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-**

Tre'gne'gnash had almost finished scouting the east side of the burned spire cliff when he heard the dragon roar. He was sure they could hear it all the way back at the camp, but took the click-com from his belt, and rapped the code back to the camp. The sentry on duty clicked back, confirming that he had heard and was spreading the warning.

Tre clutched the half-meter dragon claw that he wore in his belt. He'd found it in the wastes on his warrior's quest. He had found no dragon to fight, not even a small one, but when he ran out of water and was forced to return, he had found the claw in the sand, in a footprint not twenty feet from where he had slept that day. The Tusken elders had taken it as a sign of blessing, and though he was technically not a warrior, he was considered an adult, and allowed to remain with the tribe.

The dragon roared again, and Tre moved toward it, scaling the cliff and moving toward the half-gourd rock formation, from which the cries echoed. He got to the top just in time to see the dragon rear back on its hindmost legs. It was the largest dragon he had ever seen. It bellowed and snapped at an orange-and-tan thing that was clinging to its massive head.

The dragon tossed its head and the orange-and-tan thing flew off. It twisted back around and snapped the thing out of the air, but it burst apart as smoke between the creature's teeth. Dozens more of the orange-and-tan creatures were crawling up the dragon's side, swarming like ants.

Tre took out a set of binoculars that he had taken from a dead outlander. He held them to his goggles. He got them adjusted, and saw that it was not a swarm of insects clinging to the dragon, but outlanders. The alien creatures stuck to the beast's skin and stabbed it with small triangular knives.

From time to time, outlanders would come into the desert on their unholy floating metal slabs. They would search for dragons and try to kill them with blasters and bombs. The warriors of the tribe got rid of such vermin when they could, but it didn't seem to convince other outlanders not to come. Tre picked up his click-com again and signaled the tribe. Either the dragon would kill the outlanders, or the tribe would kill them as they fled. They would not leave the desert.

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It was not as easy as it looked on paper. That was for damn sure.

Naruto leapt off the side of the dragon as it rolled again. Most of his clones managed to jump clear as well, but five held on too long and were crushed. As soon as the dragon righted itself, they swarmed again.

Naruto and his clones had been tearing at the creature for the better part of an hour, but the results were not impressive. Naruto's knives were getting very dull, and the dragon was covered in hundreds of little wounds, which probably were the equivalent of paper cuts. He supposed it might eventually bleed to death or get an infection, but not before the day was up.

For the thousandth time, Naruto wished Kakashi had taught him some offensive jutsu. That lightning blade that his sensei had accidently run through Haku's chest in Wave country would've done the dragon serious harm. He frowned as his imaginary self stabbed his arm into the dragon's side. His arm went in up to the shoulder, and stuck. Then the dragon rolled over and crushed him. Maybe he was better off without the chidori.

Maybe if he could drive it crazy enough, he could convince it to run off a cliff, but he'd have to get it up the cliff to begin with. Or maybe he could get one of his clones to crawl down its throat and try to chop it up from the inside. He looked over at the nearest clone and tried to communicate the idea. The clone pretended it couldn't hear him. Naruto glared.

He was still thinking when blaster fire started raining down around him. For a second, he hoped it was Shreevok or somebody come to back him up, but when he looked over, he saw the cliffs around them were swarming with Tuskens, taking shots at him with their gafi sticks. The shots were hitting the dragon too, but it didn't seem to notice them, or at least Naruto and his clones were closer, so it blamed the new pain on them.

The gafi blasts weren't doing much more to the dragon than the small knife wounds were, but when the clones got hit, they vanished. Naruto made the seals again and whipped up a new batch of clones, but he was already feeling tired, and this last batch had him scraping the bottom of his reserves.

The dragon's tail came whipping around and Naruto pushed chakra into his legs to leap over it. He just barely made it over, but while he was in the air, the shot from a gafi stick found him.

Pain went from one side of his body to the other, and he landed badly. The dragon noticed injured prey and tried to step on him, but Naruto's clones snatched him out of the way, tossing him from one to the other to get him clear. The last clone in the chain to catch him was hit by blaster fire, and he was dropped painfully in the sand. Naruto rolled down the dune he was on. He got out of the line of sight of the dragon and the Tuskens, but with so many of his clones being killed so regularly, he still knew pretty much everything that was going on.

He pressed his hand to his side. The shot had hit him right below the ribs. It hadn't cauterized completely, and blood was dribbling out. It hurt a lot when he took a breath, but he could still breathe. That probably meant his lungs were alright.

"Only fried my guts," Naruto gasped. "No big deal."

He ran his hand over the other side of his body, and that came away bloody, too. It was a through-and-through.

"Ok, maybe it's a big deal."

**_I can fix it if you sit still for a bit_**, a voice in the back of his head said.

"I can't right now, Fox. I've got to kill that dragon."

**_No you don't. You could just go back to that filthy little village and kill everyone who opposes you. You could kill that fat worm, Boroka, and that strange blue creature, and free the dream wanderer and his mother. You have power enough to rule this place._**

"If I just start killing them, they'll hurt the Skywalkers," Naruto said as he stuck a bandage over one side of the blaster hole. He wondered if you could see light through it. He decided the pain was making him loopy. "They've got those computer bombs in them, and don't pretend you know how to get those out. I know you don't."

**_If you stopped trying to be a hero and acted like a shinobi, you could have whatever you wanted. Killing is what you were meant to do._**

"If you're so fond of killing, why don't you give me a hand with this dragon?" Naruto said.

**_What's in it for me?_**

"You get to kill something really, really big," Naruto said. "And I'll be out here till it's dead or I am. So make with the chakra or make your peace with the gods."

Naruto wondered if the Fox was really going to give him any. He usually didn't ask for it, not after that jutsu had gone so wrong and trapped him here, but it still leaked out sometimes when he was hurt or mad. He knew the Fox hated him and would probably be happy if he lost the Skywalkers. But he would rather die than fail and he knew the Fox didn't want to die. Speaking of death, he felt his last clone dispel.

"Come on, already!" Naruto said.

A moment before it was crushed, the clone had seen the dragon coming toward the sand dune Naruto was hiding behind. Naruto got to his feet and pulled a knife. His legs were wobbly and he almost lost his balance on the loose sand as the dragon's shadow fell over him and he was forced to crane his neck up to see its head. It roared and lunged.

Naruto was leaping when the Fox's chakra hit him. He almost blasted off the ground. The dragon got a mouth full of sand, and a kicked-up wave of loose grains spilled over Naruto's head as he landed. He kicked his way free of the impromptu grave and looked around for the dragon. It had frozen, mere feet away.

In the dragon's eyes, Naruto could see his reflection glowing red. He roared at the dragon. It flinched back.

The sound echoed through the suddenly silent desert.

Naruto charged.

He couldn't find a knife, so he clawed at the dragon's face with his hands, and strips of flesh went flying. It roared and snapped at him. He jammed his claws into its skin and crawled up past its eyes. The dragon swiped at him with its own claws but he dodged, moving to the back of its neck. It thrashed more desperately than it had against his entire army of clones. It even managed to roll on top of him, but he held on, and when it righted itself, he was still there.

Naruto found its spine and started digging. He wasn't an expert in anatomy of alien dragons, but he figured if it had a spine, it probably had a spinal cord in there, and most things didn't live very long without them. The Fox's chakra gave him the strength he needed to dig through the hide and muscle and crack the bone.

The dragon was going completely insane. It reared up on its hind legs and flipped over backwards, slamming its full weight onto the tiny human on its back. It wasn't enough.

Naruto's hands found the slick rubbery cord, barely bigger around than his wrist. He ripped through it.

The thrashing actually got worse for a few minutes. Later, Naruto learned this was because the dragon actually had other nerve centers in its body, miniature brains that helped with local reflexes, just because the brain was so far away. But with the actual brain cut off, there was no hope of recovery.

He went to the beast's side. Using his claws, he ripped it open, boiling hot guts spilling out around him. His mind struggled to remember what the old hunters at the bar had told him. The pearls would be in the gizzard. He waded in. He found a bunch of melon-sized round things in there and stuffed them into his empty weapons pouches. They were so gory he didn't know for sure what they were.

Naruto crawled out of under the creature. He shook off sand and blood, and looked back at the dragon. It was upside down with its tongue hanging out. The tongue was still twitching weakly, and the creature was still blinking. It wasn't dead yet. It was just suffering.

Again, Naruto felt sorry for the huge thing. As he felt that, he felt the Fox's chakra draining away, and realized the job still wasn't finished.

"More!" he said to the Fox.

He felt grumbling in the back of his head, but the chakra surged.

He crawled up onto the dragon and went to work on its exposed throat, ripping and tearing as blood fountained up around him. The head finally came loose. He lifted it and howled. The demon chakra warped his voice until even the dragon's bellows sounded more human than he did. The chakra drained away, and his limbs shook so badly he dropped the head, and barely managed not to crush himself with it. He could hear roaring in his ears, and at first he thought it was an echo, but then he looked up.

On the cliffs, the Tuskens were howling back.

"Oh yeah, them."

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**Watto's Junkyard…**

Anakin sat behind the desk, sorting slightly-damaged processor cores. Watto hovered by the com link. Three days ago they had received a very garbled broadcast. It sounded like Naruto's voice, but the static was so bad, it was hard to be sure. Three very clear phrases made it through, though.

"-fssssss….sts…..got dragon…sssssts….be there soon…bzzzzzzt….Jawas giving me a ride…"

So Watto, despite his fear of death by Hutt, had put off the sale of Shmi and Anakin, until Naruto got back. Boroka was not happy, but he hadn't sent anyone to put a gun to Watto's head to demand a signature on a sales receipt.

Anakin felt a tug in the back of his head and put down the processors. He walked up to the com and adjusted the frequency dials. As he went through the channels, he got an incoming signal. A moment later, a blurry image appeared on the screen.

It was Naruto's face, almost masked by filth. On his right there was a Jawa, clicking and muttering in what Anakin figured was an unhappy way.

"Hey! Watto, I got your pearl, so you bring the contract and everything to the main gate. We'll be there in another hour," Naruto declared.

His teeth were a glaring white amidst the dirt that hid his features.

"You….human, you got a pearl?" Watto asked. "From a dragon?"

"Yup!" Naruto said, picking up a large, round filthy thing and waving it in front of the screen. Anakin though it was more likely that Naruto was returning with a dragon's kidney stone, but didn't say anything aloud. "Oh, yeah! And bring a couple hundred gallons of water and that explosive-implant-remover thing, too. Bye!"

"Wait, what?" Watto asked.

The screen had already gone blank.

"What's he mean, he needs water?" Watto asked.

"I don't know," Anakin said.

"You think he really has a pearl?" Watto asked.

Anakin didn't. "Maybe."

"Right, right. We close early today. Go get your mother and meet me at the gate," Watto said. "And don't say anything to anyone. Boroka might hear."

Anakin nodded and rushed off.

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The group settled a short distance from the gate, waiting under the scorching suns. Anakin had used a few thousand credits from Naruto's prize fighting account to order three 500-gallon tubs of water. The tubs were covered, of course, so Anakin, Shmi, Watto, and the slave contract agent settled on them to watch the horizon.

The slave contract agent's droid kept up a stream of passive-aggressive comments that let them all know it was not enjoying the sun. The agent was a reptilian Girs'k and didn't seem to mind the heat, and its rudimentary external eardrums left it immune to the droid's high, whining tones.

Anakin felt like they had been waiting forever watching the horizon. He wished something would come along to break up the monotony. He heard the thrum of repulsors and turned.

A barge left the city gates and lumbered towards them, kicking up dust before parking between them and the city. An entire side of the barge opened up, revealing Boroka the Hutt. He was reclining on a dais, surrounded by guards, servants, and data screens.

"The exalted Lord Boroka wishes to know what you are doing out here," a fat servant called from the Hutt's side as the huge, worm-like creature stuffed a snail the size of a watermelon into its mouth.

"We are just making a delivery," Watto called.

"Not planning to run?" the fat slave asked.

"Do I look like someone who runs?" Watto said, kicking his stumpy legs against the side of the tank he sat on.

"His mightiness Lord Boroka heard you had a higher offer for your slaves, Watto," the servant said. "He came to see if someone really offered you a pearl."

Anakin's stomach did a little flip. If they had heard that much, they must know what Naruto had asked for and when he was arriving, or at least when he said he was arriving. Anakin looked over at the Hutt's barge again. It wasn't exactly bristling with weapons, but Watto had nothing but a little holdout blaster and two human slaves. Anakin did have one of Naruto's knives on him, but he couldn't throw it hard enough to injure a Hutt. Anakin looked over at Watto, wondering what he would say. The toydarian didn't really have a choice.

"A pearl was offered," Watto said. "We wait to see if it will show up."

"How long have you been waiting, eh?" the servant said.

Anakin saw Watto look down at his data pad, fiddling with it as if he were trying to figure out the time. Anakin felt like the longer he was quiet, the worse it would get.

"You sliced our comm," Anakin shouted. "Shouldn't you know?"

Watto glared at Anakin, but didn't contradict him.

"Your slave needs to learn some manners," the servant said.

Watto shrugged. "He won't be my problem much longer."

The Hutt belched something. The servant translated.

"Boroka has increased his generous bid to 170,000 credits. I suggest you accept it and reality. There is no pearl coming."

"Then why are you out here wasting credits on a last-minute trip?" Anakin asked.

"Slave, I will-"

"THERE!" Shmi interrupted. It was probably the first time she had ever interrupted anyone in her life.

A line of black dots was cresting the edge of the dune sea.

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**The Present…**

"And this part is on the vid!" the glowing, transparent Naruto announced. The…hollow-gram pointed and another ghostly blue figure appeared, and then another and then another. Dozens of men marched along with what looked like spears in their hands. The men's heads were wrapped in layers of brown cloth, except for wire goggles and some sort of breather mask. Behind the men marched a row of creatures that looked like a cross between elephants and goats. Behind the strange animals came a huge rhomboid building, rolling along on caterpillar treads. On top of the building was the dragon's head, still covered in leathery flesh. Atop the dragon's head rode a small figure, whose features were mostly hidden by a crust of bloody sand and gore. Despite the filth, Jiraiya recognized the small figure's grin.

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The large number of Tuskens marching towards the city brought an equally large number of armed men through the city gates. Some were in the security force, others just wanted to protect their property. Speeders were lining up and men with blasters were peeking over the walls. Tuskens didn't have anywhere near the fire power those planning to defend the city did. Coming out of the desert like this was pretty much a suicide run…if it was an attack. The Jawa sand crawler that was accompanying them with a dragon head strapped to the top gave them enough to think about that they didn't immediately open fire.

One of the Tuskens at the front of the group came forward, and shrieked and warbled at the top of his lungs. Those lined up on the walls exchanged looks.

"Did anyone catch that?" someone yelled in basic.

The Girs'k's droid buzzed thoughtfully for a moment. "Maybe!" it said.

Everyone turned toward it expectantly.

"My Tusken isn't very good," the Droid said. "But whose is? From what I can decipher, that little goo-covered biped has been declared the killer of the sand spirit, and the demon of a thousand shadows. They will not make war against his people. They will not spill the blood of his women or children. They will not speak against him to the gods. They will not slaughter his Bantha or take from his water traps. They will not…something about his Jawa. They will not place curses upon his shoes. They will not…well they just keep going on like that, you get the idea."

Naruto stood up and waved. "It's cool! They're with me!"

No one in the militia seemed impressed by that statement.

"They gave me a ride back. They're just here to get some water for these big furry guys, and then they'll go back to yelling angry things in the desert. Ani! You brought the water, right?" Naruto called.

"What do you think these are?" Anakin said, waving at the tubs.

Naruto hopped down off the top of the Jawas' crawler, landing with a cloud of dust upon the road. He marched up to Watto, and the small toydarian could see the red in the boy's eyes. Naruto waved him off the tub of water, grabbed the edge and dragged it over to the Tuskens and their Bantha. He popped off the lid and one of the huge, furry quadrupeds lowered its head to drink. He came back for the next tub. Anakin heard men on the wall behind him trying to guess how much the tubs weighed. When that task was done, he marched back up to Watto.

Naruto reached into the beaten, filthy sack at his side and pulled out a dragon's pearl. He used his sleeve to wipe the goo off it. It was blue and reflected the light of the two suns no matter how it was held. Anakin figured it had to be worth at least a million credits.

Naruto spoke.

"I picked you out this one, 'cause it looks like your head."

Watto for a long moment was too stupefied to respond. He pointed at the contract agent, and finally managed to wave him over.

"For this, them" Watto muttered, gesturing vaguely at Shmi and Anakin. He seemed unable to look away from the pearl.

The contract agent looked at the pearl as well, but he managed, with the aid of his droid, to fill out the necessary forms. The droid removed the implants. It stung like crazy, but one second Anakin was having a huge needle jammed in his chest, and the next he was free. Shmi swooned when her controller was removed, but Naruto steadied her before she fell. He left a gooey, bloody handprint on her dress.

Naruto tossed the pearl to Watto, who, after a tense moment of fumbling, managed to catch it. The toydarian gazed, enraptured, at the pearl, then suddenly tensed as he felt envious eyes upon him. He was surrounded on all sides by people who would gladly and easily kill him for his new treasure.

"Hey…Naruto," the toydarian said, addressing the human by his name for the first time. "How about…you get me to a ship off this planet, and I throw in my shop on this deal?"

"Deal," Naruto said.

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**The Present…**

"And he had four other pearls in his bag," Shmi said. "He gave one to the sand people and one to the Jawa. The other two he sold."

"And those jewels-"

"Pearls," she corrected.

"Those pearls were enough to buy all this?!" Jiraiya exclaimed.

"Not all of this, no," she said. "But it was enough to get things moving. We used what money we had to buy out as many other slaves as we could, and they worked with us, to get more money, to buy passage home if they still had somewhere to go, or to buy out other slaves."

"And this movement caught on this quickly?"

"When you are owned, freedom cannot come too quickly," she said. "We did eventually get some outside help."

The foot steps were almost inaudible, and were Jiraiya not trained as a ninja he would not have noticed them at all. He glanced over his shoulder at the shadow spilling down the steps; it was a being as large as he was. He'd have said man, based on the walk, except there were a lot of large bipedal things walking around that he wouldn't call men. He supposed it could have been a tall, narrow-hipped panda bear coming down the steps.

It turned out to be a man, human, and at first glance Jiraiya thought he might have been a Hyuga. The man had long dark hair with a little gray in it, and pale flowing clothes, but the man had a beard and a faint smile on his face, not to mention hazel irises and pupils.

"Shmi," the stranger greeted in a mild voice. "How are you today?"

"Well," she said, getting up to exchange bows. "And yourself?"

"Well enough," he said. "We arrived in system earlier than expected, but not early enough, it seems."

She nodded. "Let me introduce you. Ero-sennin, this is Jedi Master Qui-gon Jinn. Qui-gon Jinn, this is Ero-sennnin."

"My name is Jiraiya! Seriously, what has the brat been telling you about me?"

"He simply said your penchant for debauchery would make a Hutt blush," the Jedi said.

Jiraiya decided he'd have to get himself invited to a Hutt bash. They sounded like they knew how to party.

"Is Ani with you?" Shim asked.

"He insisted he had to do some maintenance on his fighter, so he's still aboard the _Iruka_. He should be down later today," Qui-gon said.

"Does his fighter truly need maintenance?" Shmi asked.

"Probably not."

"I see," she said, sounding both disappointed and concerned. "Any word on Naruto?"

"The situation on Gretskin has grown complicated. I don't know how long he'll be delayed," Qui-gon said.

"I suppose there is nothing we can do about such things," she said. "We've only just arrived at the museum. Would you like to accompany us on a tour? You could explain all those Force things I pretend to understand."

"Certainly I will," the Jedi said. "If three is not a crowd?"

Jiraiya just shrugged. There was something strained between Shmi and Qui-gon. He supposed they might be exes, but that didn't seem quite right.

They wandered through the halls, which held assorted relics of the village's history, half-melted machines, stained clothes, assorted paintings and sculptures, as well as more of the three dimensional hollow-gram projections, though Naruto wasn't featured in these, and the recorded voices spoke a language Jiraiya didn't know.

"So how did you meet Naruto?" Jiraiya asked the Jedi.

"I was conducting some research on the women's side of the Tattooine hot-springs-"

"What?" Jiraiya interrupted.

"By which I mean the ship I was traveling on was damaged in a battle, and we were forced to land on Tattooine for repairs…"

* * *

**Author's note: **Sorry this took forever. I blame porcupines. The next chapter features more Jedi than you can shake a stick at. Stay tuned.

* * *


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